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THE CRITERION; 



TEST OF TALK ABOUT FAIILIAR THINGS. 



m Series of Hssajjs. 



BY 

HENRY T. TUCKERMAN. 



Our knowledge is real only so far as there is a conformity between our ideas 
and the reality of things ; but what shall be the Criterion ? — Locke. 

the flowery walk 

Of letters, genial table talk, 

Or deep dispute and graceful jest. 




NEW YORK: 
PUBLISHED BY HURD AND HOUGHTON. 

BOSTON: E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY. 

1866. 



.C7. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by 

Henry T. Tuckkrman, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New 

York. 



RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE : 

STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY 

H 0. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. 



CONTENTS. 



— • — 

/ PAGE 

Inns 1 

Authors 43 

Pictures • . 77 

Doctors .' . 106 

Holidays 132 

Lawyers 171 

Sepulchres 202 

Actors 223 

Newspapers 252 

Preachers 292 

Statues 325 

Bridges 345 



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INNS. 

Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round, 
Whate'or his fortunes may have been, 

Must sigh to think how oft he 's found 
Life's waraiest welcome at an inn. 

Shenstone. 

HE old, legitimate, delightful idea of an Inn is 
becoming obsolete ; like so many other tradi- 
tional blessings, it has been sacrificed to the 
genius of locomotion. The rapidity with which dis- 
tance is consumed obviates the need that so long ex- 
isted of by-way retreats and halting-places. A hearty 
meal or a few hours' sleep, caught between the arrival 
of the trains, is all the railway traveller requires ; and 
the modern habit of moving in caravans has infinitely 
lessened the romantic probabilities and comfortable real- 
ities of a journey : the rural alehouse and picturesque 
hostel now exist chiefly in the domain of memory ; 
crowds, haste, and ostentation triumph here over pri- 
vacy and rational enjoyment, as in nearly all the arrange- 
ments of modern society. Old Walton would discover 
now but few of the secluded inns that refreshed him 
on his piscatorial excursions ; the ancient ballads on the 
wall have given place to French paper ; the scent of 
lavender no longer makes the linen fragrant; instead 
of the crackle of the open wood-fire, we have the dingy 
coal - smoke, and exhalations of a stove ; and green 
1 



2 INNS. 

blinds usurp the place of the snowy curtains. Not only 
these material details, but the social character of the 
inn, is sadly changed. Few hosts can find time to 
gossip ; the clubs have withdrawn the wits ; the excite- 
ment of a stage-coach arrival is no more ; and a poet 
might travel a thousand leagues without finding a ro- 
mantic "maid of the inn," such as Southey has immor- 
talized. Jollity, freedom, and comfort are no longer 
inevitably associated with the name ; the world has 
become a vast procession that scorns to linger on its 
route, and has almost forgotten how to enjoy. Thanks, 
however, to the conservative spell of literature, we can 
yet appreciate, in imagination, at least, the good old Eng- 
lish inn. Goldsmith's Village Alehouse has daguer- 
reotyped its humble species, while Dr. Johnson's even- 
ings at the Mitre keep vivid the charm of its metropol- 
itan fame. Indeed, it is quite impossible to imagine 
what British authors would have done without the sol- 
ace and inspiration of the inn. Addison fled thither 
from domestic annoyance ; Dryden's chair at Will's was 
an oracular throne ; when hard pressed, Steele and 
Savage sought refuge in a tavern and wrote pamphlets 
for a dinner ; Farquhar found there his best comic ma- 
terial ; Sterne opens his " Sentimental ^Tourney " with his 
landlord, Monsieur Dessein, Calais, and his inn-yard ; 
Shenstone confessed he found *' life's warmest welcome 
at an inn ; " Sheridan's convivial brilliancy shone there 
with peculiar lustre; Hazlitt relished Congreve anew 
reading him in the shady windows of a village inn after 
a long walk ; even an old Almanac, or Annual Regis- 
ter, will acquire an interest under such circumstances ; 
and a dog-eared copy of the " Seasons " found in such a 
place induced Coleridge to exclaim, " This is fame ! " 



INNS. 3 

while Byron exulted when informed that a well-thumbed 
volume of the " English Bards " had been seen soon after 
its publication, at a little hostel in Albany. Elia's quaint 
anecdote of the Quakers when they all eat supper with- 
out paying for it, and Irving's " Stout Gentleman," are 
incidents which could only have been suggested by a 
country inn ; and as to the novelists, from Smollett and 
Fielding to Scott and Dickens, the most characteristic 
scenes occur on this vantage-ground, where the strict 
unities of life are temporarily discarded, and its zest 
miraculously quickened by fatigue, hunger, a kind of 
infinite possibility of events, a singular mood of adven- 
ture and pastime, nowhere else in civilized lands so 
readily induced. It is, therefore, by instinct that these 
enchanting chroniclers lead us thither, from old Chau- 
cer to our own Longfellow. Gil Bias acquired his first 
lesson in a knowledge of the world, by his encounter 
with the parasite at the inn of Panafleur ; and Don 
Quixote's enthusiasm always reaches a climax at these 
places of way-side sojourn. The Black Bull, at Is- 
lington, is said to have been Sir Walter Ealeigh's man- 
sion ; Dolly's Chop-House is dear to authors for the 
sake of Goldsmith and his friends, who used to go there 
on their way to and from Paternoster Row. At the 
Salutation and Cat, Smithfield, Coleridge and Lamb 
held memorable converse ; and Steele often dated his 
"Tatlers" from the Trumpet. How appropriate for 
Voltaire to have lodged, in London, at the White Per- 
uke ! Spenser died at an inn in King Street, West- 
minster, on his return from Ireland. At the Red 
Horse, Stratford, is the '• Irving room," precious to the 
American traveller; and how renowned have sweet 
Anne Page and jolly Falstaff made the very name of 



4 INNS. 

the Garter Inn ! In the East a monastery, in the 
Desert a tent, on the Nile a boat, a hacienda in South 
America, a kiosk in Turkey, a caffe in Italy, but in Brit- 
ain an inn, is the pilgrim's home, and one not less 
characteristic. The subject as suggestive of the phi- 
losophy of civilization is worth investigation. 

In England and in towns of Anglo-Saxon origin, where 
the economies of life have a natural sway, we find inns 
representative ; in London, especially, a glance at the 
parlor-wall reveals the class to whose convenience the 
tavern is dedicated : in one the portraits of actors, in 
another scenes in the ring and on the race-course, here 
the countenance of a leading merchant, and there a 
military effigy, suggest the vocation of those who chiefly 
frequent the inn ; nor are local features less certain 
to find recognition : a view of the nearest nobleman's 
estate, or his portrait, ornaments the sitting-room ; and 
the observant eye can always discover an historical 
hint at these public resorts. Heywood the dramatist 
aptly specified this representative character of inns : — 

" The gentry to the King's Head, 

The nobles to the Crown, 
The knights unto the Golden Fleece, 

And to the Plough the clown; 
The churchman to the Mitre, 

The shepherd to the Star, 
The gardener hies him to the Rose, 

To the Drum the man of war; 
To the Feathers, ladies, you ; the Globe 

The seamen do not scorn, 
The usurer to the Devil, and 

The townsman to the Horn ; 
The huntsman to the White Hart, 

To the Ship the merchants go. 
But you that do the Muses love 

The sign called River Po ; 



INNS. b 

The bankrupt to the World's End, 

The fool to the Fortune hie, 
Unto the Mouth the oyster-wife, 

The fiddler to the Pie, 

The drunkard to the Vine, 
The beggar to the Bush, then meet 
And with Sir Humphrey dine." 

Inn-signs are indeed historical landmarks: in the 
Middle Ages the Cross-Keys, the Three Kings, and 
St. Francis, abounded; the Puritans substituted for 
Angel and Lady, the Soldier and Citizen ; the Sara- 
cen's Head was a device of the Crusades ; and before, 
the Coach and Horses was the sign of the Packhorse, 
indicative of the days of equestrian travel. Many cur- 
rent anecdotes attest the virtue of an old, and the haz- 
ards of a new inn-sign ; as when the loyal host substi- 
tuted the head of George the Fourth for the ancient 
ass, which latter effigy being successfully adopted by a 
neighboring innkeeper, his discomfited rival had in- 
scribed under the royal effigy, " This is the real ass." 
Thackeray cites an inn-sign as illustrative of Scotch 
egotism : " In Cupar-Fife," he writes, " there 's a little 
inn called the * Battle of Waterloo,' and what do you 
think the sign is ? The ' Battle of Waterloo ' is one 
broad Scotchman laying about him with a broad- 
sword." 

The coffee-room of the best class of English inns, 
carpeted and curtained, the dark rich hue of the old 
mahogany, the ancient plate, the four-post bed, the sir- 
loin or mutton joint, the tea, muffins, Cheshire and Stil- 
ton, the ale, the coal-fire, and the "Times," form an 
epitome of England ; and it is only requisite to ponder 
well the associations and history of each of these items, 



6 INNS. 

to arrive at what is essential in English history and 
character. The impassable divisions of society are 
shown in the difference between the " commercial " and 
the " coffee-room ; " the time-worn aspect of the furni- 
ture is eloquent of conservatism ; the richness of the 
meats and strength of the ale explain the bone and 
sinew of the race ; the tea is fragrant with Cowper's 
memory and suggestive of East India conquests ; the 
cheese proclaims a thrifty agriculture, the bed and 
draperies comfort, the coal-fire manufactures ; while the 
" Times " is the chart of English enterprise, division of 
labor, wealth, self-esteem, politics, trade, court-life, " in- 
accessibility to ideas," and bullyism. 

The national subserviency to rank is as plainly 
evinced by the plates on chamber-doors, at the provin- 
cial inns, setting forth that therein on a memorable 
night slept a certain scion of nobility. And from the 
visitor at the great house of a neighborhood, when so- 
journing at the inn thereof, is expected a double fee. 
As an instance of the inappropriate, of that stolid in- 
sensibility to taste and tact which belongs to the nation, 
consider the English waiter. His costume is that of 
a clergyman or a gentleman dressed for company, 
and in ridiculous contrast with his menial obeisance ; 
perhaps it is the self-importance nourished by this 
costume which renders him such a machine, incapable 
of an idea beyond the routine of handing a dish and 
receiving a sixpence. 

Old Hobson, whose name is proverbially familiar, 
went with his wain from Cambridge to the Ball Inn, 
Bishopsgafce Street, London. Clement's Inn was the 
scene of that memorable dialogue between Shallow and 
Sir John ; at the Cock in Bond Street, Sir Charles 



INNS. 7 

Sedley got scandalously drunk. Will's CofFee-House 
was formerly called the Rose ; hence the line, — 

" Supper and friends expect me at the Rose." 

Button's, so long frequented by the wits of Queen 
Anne's time, was kept by a former servant of Lady 
Warwick; and there the author of Cato fraternized 
with Garth, Armstrong, and other contemporary writers. 
Ben Jonson held his club at the Devil Tavern, and 
Shakspeare and Beaumont used to meet him at the 
Mermaid ; the same inn is spoken of by Pope, and 
Swift writes Stella of his dinner there. Beaumont thus 
reveals to Ben Jonson their convivial talk : — 

What things have we seen 
Done at the Mermaid ! heard words that have been 
So nimble and so full of subtle fire, 
As if that every one from whom they came 
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, 
And had resolved to live a fool the rest 
Of his dull life. 

The author of " Peter Wilkins " resided for a time at 
Clifford's Inn, and Dr. Johnson frequented all the taverns 
in Fleet Street. Old Slaughter's coffee-house in St. 
Martin's Lane was the favorite resort of Hogarth ; the 
hOfflSe where Jeremy Taylor was born is now an inn ; 
and'Prior's uncle kept an inn in London, where the poet 
was seen, when a boy, reading Horace. This incident is 
made use of by Johnson in his " Lives of the Poets " in 
a very caustic manner ; for after relating it, he observes 
of Prior, that " in his private relaxations he revived the 
tavern, and in his amorous pedantry he exhibited the 
college." 

There is no city in Europe where an imaginative 
mood can be so indefinitely prolonged as at Venice ; 



8 I^NS. 

and, in the early summer, the traveller, after gliding 
about all day in a gondola, and thinking of Barbarossa, 
Faliero, Titian, and the creations of Shakspeare, Ot- 
way, Byron, and Cooper, at evening, from under the 
arches of St. Mark's Square, watches the picturesque, 
and sometimes mysterious, figures, and then, between 
moss-grown palaces and over lone canals, returns to his 
locanda to find its aspect perfectly in accordance with 
his reverie ; at least such was my experience at the 
Golden Lion. The immense salle-a-manger was dimly 
lighted, and the table for two or three guests set 
in a corner and half-surrounded by a screen ; when I 
raised my eyes from my first dinner there, they fell on 
a large painting of the Death of Seneca, a print of 
which had been familiar to my childhood ; and thus 
memory was ever invoked in Venice, and her dissolving 
views reflected in the mirror of the mind, unbroken by 
the interruptions from passing life that elsewhere ren- 
der them so brief The mere fact of disembarking at 
the weedy steps, the utter silence of the canal, invaded 
only by the plash of the gondolier's oar or his warning 
cry at the angle, the tessellated pavement and quaintly 
carved furniture of the bedroom, and a certain noiseless 
step and secretive gravity observable in the attendants, 
render the Venetian inn memorable and distinci m 
reminiscence, and in perfect harmony with the jyiace 
and its associations. 

During the late revolutionary era in Europe, the inn- 
tables of Germany afforded the most reliable index of 
political opinion ; the free discussion which was there 
indulged brought out every variety of sentiment and 
theory, as it included all classes, with a due sprinkling 
of foreigners. From the old novel to the new farce, 



INNS. y 

indeed, the extremes of public opinion and the average 
tone of manners, the laughable contre-temps and the 
delightful adventure, are made to reveal themselves at 
inns, so that political sects and all vocations are identi- 
fied with them. To Rip Van Winkle, the most astonish- 
ing change he discovered in his native village, after his 
long nap, was the substitution of Washington's likeness 
for that of King George on the tavern sign. 

The dark staircase, rising from the mule-stable of a 
posada^ the bare chambers, wool-knotted mattresses, 
odor of garlic, and vegetables swimming in oil, are 
items of the Spanish inn not likely to be forgotten by 
the epicurean traveller. But good beds and excellent 
chocolate are to be found at the most uninviting Span- 
ish inns ; and the imaginative traveller enjoys the priv- 
ilege of sojourning at the very one where Don Quixote 
was knighted. In highly civilized lands, inns have not 
only a national, but a professional character ; the sign, 
the pictures on the wall, and the company, have a cer- 
tain individuality, — marine in sailors' inns, pugilistic in 
sporting ones, and picturesque in those haunted by 
artists ; the lines of demarcation are as visible as those 
which separate newspapers and shops ; in the grand di- 
vision of labor that signalizes modern life, the inn also 
has viius become an organ and a symbol. Even their 
mottoes and symbols give traditional suggestions or em- 
blazon phases of opinion ; natural history has been ex- 
hausted in supplying effigies ; mythology has yielded up 
all her deities and institutions ; heroes and localities are 
kept fresh in the traveller's imagination by their asso- 
ciation with " creature comforts." Thus he dreams of 
Cromwell at the Tumble-down Dick, and of the Stuarts 
at the King Charles in the Oak, the days of chivalry 



10 INNS. 

Sit the Star and Garter or the Croix de Malta, of bril- 
liant campaigns at the Wagram and Montmorency, of 
woman's love at the Petrarch and Laura, and of man's 
at the Freemason's Tavern.* 

My host at Ravenna had been Byron's purveyor dur- 
ing the poet's residence there ; and he was never weary 
of descanting upon his character and the incidents of 
his sojourn ; in fact, upon discovering my interest in the 
subject, he forgot the landlord in the cicerone, and gave 
no small part of a day to accompanying me to the 
haunts of the bard. Our first visit was to the Guiccioli 
Palace, and here he described his lordship's dinners 
with the precision and enthusiasm of an antiquarian 
certifying a document or medal ; then he took me to the 
Pine Forest, and pointed out the track where Byron 
used to wheel his horse at full gallojD, and discharge his 
pistol at a bottle placed on a stump, — exercises prepar- 

* "A recent London paper advertises a genuine tJiesaurvs of ancient 
tavern signs and other curiosities at auction, collected during a long 
life by some curious antiquary. The catalogue covered an extensive 
and unique collection for a history of ancient and modern inns, taverns 
and coffee-houses in town and country, (numbering upwards of 850 
signs,) formed with unwearied diligence and vast outlay during a life- 
time, and illustrated with upwards of 2500 of ancient and modern en- 
gravings, comprising topographical and antiquarian subjects, early 
views of London, caricatures, humorous and satirical subjects, piM|raits 
of celebrities whose names have been adopted as signs, characters re- 
markable for their eccentricities, actors and actresses, others illustrating 
ancient sports and pastimes, etchings, wood-cuts, and numerous others, 
plain and colored, many of great rarity; also 415 drawings in water- 
colors, sepia, and pen and ink, and numerous copies from scarce en- 
gravings and old paintings; together with extensive antiquarian, local, 
and biographical notices (both printed and in MS.) on signs and their 
origin, merriments and witticisms in prose and verse, tales, traditions, 
legends, and remarkable incidents, singular inscriptions on tap-room 
windows and walls, anecdotes of landlords, guests, visitors, writers, 
etc." 



INNS. 11 

atory to liis Grecian campaign. At a particular flag- 
stone, in the main street, my guide suddenly paused ; 
" Signore," said he, "just as milord had reached this 
spot one evening, he heard the report of a musket, and 
saw an officer fall a few rods in advance ; dismounting, 
he rushed to his side, and found him to be a familiar 
acquaintance, an agent of the government, who had 
thus become the victim to private vengeance. Byron 
had him conveyed to his own apartment and placed on 
a bed, where in half an hour he expired. This event 
made a deep impression on his mind ; he was dispirited 
for a week, and wrote a description of death from a 
shot, which you will find in his poems, derived from this 
scene." With such local anecdotes my Byronic host 
entertained me so well, that the departed bard ever 
since has seemed to live in my remembrance rather 
than my fancy. 

Whoever has eaten trout caught in the Anio at the 
little inn at Tivoli, or been detained by stress of weather 
in that of Albano, will not forget the evidences the walls 
of both exhibit that rollicking artists have felt at home 
there. Such heads and landscapes, caricatures, and 
grotesque animals as are there improvised, baffle de- 
scription. 

A well is the inn of the desert. " The draoroman usu- 

o 

ally looks out for some place of shelter," says the author 
of " Over the Lebanon to Balbec ; " " the shadow of a 
ruin or the covering of a grove of fig-trees is the most 
common, and, if possible, near a well or stream. The 
first of all considerations is to reach a spot where you 
can get water ; so that, throughout the East, the well 
answers to the old English ' Half-way House,' and road- 
side ' Accommodation for Man and Beast/ which gave 



12 INNS. 

their cheerful welcome to the ' Tally Ho ' and ' Red 
Rover ' that flourished before this age of iron." 

The pedestrian in Wales sometimes encounters a 
snug and beautifully situated hostel, (perhaps the Ang- 
ler's Rest,) where five minutes beside the parlor-fire, 
and a chat with the landlady or her pretty daughter, 
gives him so complete a home feeling that it is with 
painful reluctance he again straps on his knapsack ; at 
liberty to muse by the ever-singing tea-kettle, if tho 
weather is unpropitious, stroll out in view of a noblo 
mountain or a fairy lake in the warm sunset, or hear 
the news from the last wayfarer in the travellers' room ; 
and there is thus mingled a sense of personal indepen- 
dence, comfort, and solitude, which is rarely experienced 
even in the most favored domain of hospitality. An 
equally winsome but more romantic charm holds the 
roaming artist who stops at Albano or Volterra, where 
the dreamy camjjapia or Etruscan ruins alternate with 
groups of sunburnt coniadini, lighted up by the char- 
coal's glow in a way to fascinate Salvator, before his 
contented gaze ; his portfolio fills up with miraculous 
rapidity ; and the still life is agreeably varied by the 
scenic costumes and figures which grace the vintage or 
sifesta. Some humble Champollion could easily add to 
the curiosities of literature by a volume gleaned among 
inn inscriptions, — from the marble tablet announcing 
the sojourn of a royal personage, to the rude cari- 
cature on the whitewashed wall and the sentimental 
couplet on the window - pane ; to say nothing of the 
albums which* enshrine so many tributes to Etna 
and the White Mountains, — the heirlooms of Abbate, 
the famous padrone of Catania, and Crawford of the 
Notch. 



INNS. 13 

Sicily is famous for the absence of inns and the in- 
tolerable discomfort of those that do exist; but mine 
host of Catania was the prince of landlords ; a fine 
specimen of manly beauty, and with the manners of a 
gentleman, he seemed to think his guests entitled to 
all the courtesy which should follow an invitation ; he 
made formal calls upon them, and gave sage advice as 
to the best way to pass the time ; fitted them out with 
hospitable skill, and experienced counsels, for the ascent 
of Etna, and brought home choice game from his hunt- 
ing excursions, as a present to the " stranger within his 
gates ; " his discourse, too, was of the most bland and 
entertaining description ; he was " a fellow of infimte 
wit, of most excellent fancy ; " and these ministrations 
derived a memorable charm from a certain gracefulness 
and winsome cordiality; no wonder his scrap-book is 
filled with eulogiums, and that the traveller in Sicily, 
by the mere force of contrast, records in hyperboles 
the merits of the Corona d' Oro. Alas for the muta- 
bility of inns and their worthy hosts! Abbate was 
killed by an accidental shot, during an emeute in Cata- 
nia in 1848. 

The waxed floor, light curtains, and gay paper of a 
Parisian bedroom, however cheerful, are the reverse of 
snug ; but in the provincial inns of the Continent, with 
less of comfort there is often more historical interest 
than in those of England ; the stone staircases and 
floors, and the scanty furniture are forlorn ; and the 
exuberance of the host's civility is often in ludicrous 
contrast with the poverty of his larder. An hour or two 
in the dreary salle-a-manger of a provincial French inn 
on a rainy day is the acme of a voyageur's depression. 
The restaurant and cafe have superseded the French 



14 INNS. 

inns of whose gastronomic renown and scenes of in- 
trigue and violence we read in Dumas' historical novels ; 
romance and tragedy, the convivial and the culinary as- 
sociations, are equally prominent. " Suburban cabarets," 
observes a popular writer, " were long dangerous ren- 
dezvous for Parisians ; " before and during the Grand- 
Monarque's reign the French taverns were representa- 
tive, the army, court, men of letters, and even eccle- 
siastics having their favorite haunt : Moliere went to the 
Croix de Lorraine, and Racine to the Mouton Blanc ; 
the actors met at Les Deux Faisants ; one of the last 
of the old-school Parisian landladies — she who kept the 
Maison Rous^e — is celebrated in Beranger's Madame 
Gregoire ; Ravaillac went from a tavern to assassinate 
Henry the Fourth ; and fashionable orgies were carried 
on in the Temple Cellars. It is not uncommon to find 
ourselves in a friar's dormitory, the large hotels in the 
minor towns having frequently been erected as con- 
vents ; and in Italy, such an inn as that of Terracina, 
with its legends of banditti and its romantic site, the 
waves of the Mediterranean moaning under its lofty 
windows, infallibly recalls Mrs. Radcliffe. In the cities 
many of the hotels are palaces, where noble families 
have dwelt for centuries, and about them are percepti- 
ble the traces of decayed magnificence and the spell of 
traditional glory and crime. To an imaginative travel- 
ler these fanciful attractions oflen compensate for the 
absence of substantial merit, and there is something 
mysterious and winsome in the obsolete architecture 
and fallen grandeur of these edifices ; — huge shadows 
glide along the high cornices, the mouldy frescoes look 
as if they had witnessed strange vicissitudes, and the 
imagination readily wanders through a series of wonder- 



INNS. 15 

fill experiences of which these o\d palazzi have been the 
scene. Here, as elsewhere in the land, it is the roman- 
tic element, the charm of antiquity, that is the redeem- 
ing feature. For picturesque beauty of situation, neat- 
ness, and rural comfort, some of the inns of Switzerland 
are the most delightful on the Continent, inviting the 
stranger to linger amid the clear, fresh, and glorious 
landscape, and relish the sweet butter, white bread, and 
unrivalled honey and eggs, served so neatly every 
morning by a fair mountaineer with snowy cap and gay 
bodice. 

I am a lover of the woods, and sometimes cross the 
bay, with a friend, to Long Island, and pass a few 
hours in the strip of forest that protected our fugitive 
army at the Battle of Flatbush ; there are devious and 
shadowy paths intersecting it, and in spring and autumn 
the wild flowers, radiant leaves, and balmy stillness 
cheer the mind and senses fresh from the dust and 
bustle of the city. Often after one of these woodland 
excursions we have emerged upon a quiet road, with 
farm-houses at long intervals, and orchards and grain- 
fields adjacent, and followed its course to a village, 
whose gable-roofed domicile and ancient graveyard 
indicate an old settlement ; and here is a little inn 
which recalls our idea of the primitive English ale- 
house. It has a little Dutch porch, a sunny garden, 
the liquor is served from the square bottles of Holland, 
the back-parlor is retired and neat, and the landlady 
sits all day in the window at her sewing, and, when a 
little acquainted, will tell you all about the love-affairs 
of the village ; the cheese and sour-krout at dinner 
suggest a Flemish origin. 

The old sign that hangs at the road-side was brought 



16 INNS. 

to this country by an English publican, when the fine 
arts were supposed to be at so low a stage as to furnish 
no Dick Tinto equal to such an achievement. It repre- 
sents the arms of Great Britain, and doubtless beguiled 
many a trooper of his Majesty when Long Island was 
occupied by the English ; no sooner, however, had they 
retreated, than the republican villagers forced the land- 
lord to have an American eagle painted above the 
king's escutcheon. Indeed, it is characteristic of inns 
that they perpetuate local associations : put your head 
into an Italian boarding-house in New York, and the 
garlic, maccaroni, and red wine lead you to think your- 
self at Naples ; the snuff, dominos, and gazettes mark 
a French cafe all the world over; in Montreal you 
wake up in a room like that you occupied at Marseilles ; 
and at Halifax the malt liquor is as English as the cur- 
rency. 

" The sports of the inn-yards " are noted often in the 
memoirs of Elizabeth's reign. In a late biography of 
Lord Bacon, his brother Anthony is spoken of as " hav- 
ing taken a house in Bishopsgate Street, near the 
famous Ball Inn, where plays are performed before cits 
and gentlemen, very m,uch to the delight of Essex and 
his jovial crew." And in allusion to the Earl's con- 
spiracy the lower class of inns then and there are thus 
described : " From kens like the Hart's Horn and the 
Shipwreck Tavern, haunts of the vilest refuse of a 
great city, the spawn of hells and stews, the vomit of 
Italian cloisters and Belgian camps, Blount, long famil- 
iar with the agents of disorder, unkennels in the Earl's 
name a pack of needy ruffians eager for any device 
that seems to promise pay to their greed or license to 
their lust." It has been justly remarked by Letitia 



INNS. IT 

Landon that " after all the English hostel owes much 
of its charm to Chaucer ; our associations are of his 
haunting pictures, — his dehcate prioress, his comely 
young squire, with their pleasant interchange of tale and 
legend : " still less remote and more personal associa- 
tions endear and identify these landmarks of travel and 
sojourn in Great Britain. Scarcely a pleasant record 
of life or manners, during the last century, is destitute 
of one of these memorable resorts. Addison frequented 
the AVhite Horn at the end of Holland House Lane. 
When Sir Walter visited Wordsworth, he daily strolled 
to the Swan beyond Grasmere, to atone for the plain 
fare of the bard's cottage. " We four," naively writes 
the Rev. Archibald Carlyle, speaking of his literary 
comrades, " frequently resorted to a small tavern in the 
corner of Cockspur Street, at the Golden Ball, where we 
had a frugal supper and a little punch, as the finances 
of none of the company were in very good order ; but 
we had rich enough conversation on literary subjects, 
enlivened by Smollett's agreeable stories, which he told 
with peculiar grace." And his more than clerical zest 
for such a rendezvous is apparent in his notice of an- 
other favorite inn : " It was during this assembly that 
the inn at the lower end of the West Bow got into 
some credit, and was called the Diversorium. Thomas 
Nicholson was the man's name, and his wife's Nelly 
Douglass. Nelly was handsome, Thomas a rattling fel- 
low." Here often met Robertson the historian. Home 
the dramatist, Hume, Jardine, and other notable men of 
the Scotch metropolis. To facilitate their intercourse 
when in London, they also " established a club at a cof- 
fee-house in Saville Row; and dined together daily 
at three with Wedderburn and Jack Dalrymple." By 
2 



18 INNS. 

the same candid autobiograjDher we are informed that 
at a tavern "in Fleet Street, a physicians' chib met, 
had original papers laid before them, and always waited 
supper for Dr. Armstrong to order." These casual 
allusions indicate the essential convenience and social 
importance of the inn, before clubs had superseded 
them in Britain, and cafes on the Continent. A writer 
whose "Itinerary" is dated 1617 thus describes enter- 
tainment at the English inns of his day : " As soone 
as a passenger comes to an inne, the servants run to 
him, and one takes his horse and walkes him about till 
he is cool, then rubs him down and gives him feed ; 
another servant gives the passenger his private cham- 
ber, and kindles his fire ; the third pulls off his bootes 
and makes them cleane ; then the host and hostess 
visit him, and if he will eate with the hoste, or at a 
common table with the others, his meale will cost him 
sixpence, or, in some places, fourpence ; but if he will 
eat in his own chamber, he commands what meat he 
will, according to his appetite ; yea, the kitchen is open 
to him to order the meat to be dressed as he likes beste. 
After having eaten what he pleases, he may with credit 
set by a part for next day's breakfast. His bill will 
then be written for him, and should he object to any 
charge, the host is ready to alter it." An Italian noble- 
man of our own day,"* his appreciation of free discus- 
sion quickened by political exile, was much impressed 
with the influence and agency of the English inn in 
public affairs. " Taverns," he writes, " are the forum 
of the English ; it was here that arose the triumph of 
Burdett when he left the Tower, and the curses of 
Castlereagh when he descended into the tomb ; it is 
* Count Pecchio. 



INNS. 19 

here that begins the censure or the approval of a new 
law." 

Charles Lamb delighted to smoke his pipe at the old 
Queen's Head, and to quaff ale from the tankard pre- 
sented by one Master Cranch (a choice spirit) to a 
former host, and in the old oak-parlor where tradition 
says " the gallant Ealeigh received full souse in his 
face the contents of a jolly black-jack from an affrighted 
clown, who, seeing clouds of tobacco-smoke curling from 
the knight's mouth and nose, thought he was all on 
fire." 

'' A relic of old London is fast disappearing," says 
a journal of that city, — "the Blue Boar Inn, or the 
George and Blue Boar, as it came to be called later, 
in Holborn. For more than two hundred years this 
was one of the famous coaching-houses, where stalls 
arrived from the Northern and Midland counties. It 
is more famous still as being the place — if Lord Or- 
rery's chaplain, Morrice, may be credited — where 
Cromwell and Ireton, disguised as troopers, cut from 
the saddle-flap of a messenger a letter which they knew 
to be there, from Charles the First to Henrietta Maria." 

The Peacock, at Matlock on the Derwent, was long 
the chosen resort of artists, botanists, geologists, law- 
yers, and anglers; and perhaps at no rural English 
inn of modern times has there been more varied and 
gifted society than occasionally convened in this roman- 
tic district, under its roof 

The Hotel Gibbon, at Lausanne, suggests to one fa- 
miliar with English literature the life of that historian, 
so naively described by himself, and keeps alive the as- 
sociations of his elaborate work in the scene of its pro- 
duction ; and nightly colloquies, that are embalmed and 



20 INNS. 

embodied in genial literature, immortalize the " sky- 
blue parlor " at Ambrose's Edinburgh tavern. 

Few historical novelists have more completely mas- 
tered the details of costume, architecture, and social 
habits in the old times of England than James ; and 
his description of the inns of Queen Anne's day is as 
elaborate as it is complete : " Landlords in England at 
that time — I mean, of course, in country towns — 
were very different in many respects, and of a different 
class, from what they are at present. In the first place, 
they were not fine gentlemen ; in the next place, they 
were not discharged vcdets-de-chamhre or butlers, who, 
having cheated their masters handsomely, and perhaps 
laid them under contribution in many ways, retire to 
enjoy the fat things at their ease in their native town. 
Then, again, they were on terms of familiar inter 
course with two or three classes, completely separate 
and distinct from each other, — a sort of connecting 
link between them. At their door, the justice of the 
peace, the knight of the shire, the great man of the 
neighborhood, dismounted from his horse, and had his 
chat with mine host. There came the village lawyer, 
when he gained a cause or won a large fee or had been 
paid a long bill, to indulge in his pint of sherry, and 
gossiped as he drank it of all the affairs of his clients. 
There sneaked in the doctor to get his glass of eau-de- 
vie, or plague-water, or aqua 7nirahilis, or strong spirits, 
in short, of any other denomination, and tell little dirty 
anecdotes of his cases and his patients. There the al- 
derman, the wealthy shopkeeper, and the small propri- 
etor, or the large farmer, came to take his cheerful cup 
on Saturdays, or on market-day. But, besides these, 
the inn was the resort — though approached by another 



INNS. 21 

door — of a lower and a poorer class, with whom the 
landlord was still upon as good terms as with the oth- 
ers. The wagoner, the carter, the lawyer's and the 
banker's clerk, the shopman, the porter, even, all came 
there; the landlord was civil and familiar and chatty 
with them all." 

Geoffrey Crayon's " Shakspearian Research " culmi- 
nated at the Boar's Head, Eastcheap ; his story of the 
" Spectre Bridegroom " was appropriately related in 
the kitchen of the Pomme d'Or, in the Netherlands ; 
and he makes Rip's congenial retreat from his virago 
spouse, the " coin of vantage " in front of the village 
inn. Irving's own appreciation of these vagabond 
shrines and accidental homes is emphatic ; he com- 
mends the " honest bursts of laughter in which a man 
indulges in that temple of true liberty, an inn," and 
quotes zestfully the maxim that " a tavern is the rendez- 
vous, the exchange, the staple of good-fellows." His per- 
sonal testimony is characteristic : " To a homeless man 
there is a momentary feeling of independence, as he 
stretches himself before an inn-fire : the arm-chair is 
his throne, the poker is his sceptre, and the little parlor 
his undisputed empire." How little did the modest au- 
thor imagine, when he thus wrote, that the poker with 
which he stirred the fire in the parlor-grate of the Red 
Lion would become a sacred literary relic wherewith 
his partial countrymen are beguiled of extra fees, while 
the bard of Avon and the gentleman of Sunnyside 
mingle in the reverie of fond reminiscence. 

" I went by an indirect route to Litchfield," writes 
Hawthorne, in his English sketches, " and put up at 
the Black Swan. Had I known where to find it, I 
would rather have established myself at the inn kept by 



22 INNS. 

Mr. Boniface, and so famous for its ale in Farquhar's 
time." Gossip and gayety, the poor man's arena and 
the " breathing-time of day " of genius, thus give to the 
inn a kind of humane scope. Beethoven, wearied of his 
palace-home and courtly patronage and the "stately 
houses open to him in town and country, often forsook 
all for solitude in obscure inns, escaping from all con- 
ventionalities to be alone with himself" '^Wous voyons^' 
says Brillat-Savarin, " que les villageois font toutes les 
affaires au cabaret ; " Kousseau delighted in the frugal 
liberty thereof; and the last days of Elia are associated 
with the inn which was the goal of his daily promenade. 
"After Isola married," writes one of his friends, " and 
Mary was infirm, he took his lonely walk along the Lon- 
don road, as far as the ' Bell of Edmonton ; * and one 
day tripped over a stone and slightly wounded his fore- 
head ; erysipelas set in, and he died." Somewhat of 
the attractiveness of the inn to the philosopher is that 
its temporary and casual shelter and solace accords with 
the counsel of Sydney Smith, " to take short views," 
and Goethe's, to " cast ourselves into the sea of acci- 
dents ; " and a less amiable reason for the partiality has 
been suggested in " the wide capability of finding fault 
which an inn affords." A genial picture of one is thus 
drawn by a modern poet : — 

' This cosy hostelrie a visit craves ; 
Here will I sit awhile, 
And watch the heavenly sunshine smile 
Upon the village graves. 
Strange is this little room in which I wait, 
With its old table, rough with rustic names. 
'T is summer now; instead of blinking flames, 
Sweet-smelling ferns are hanging o'er the grate. 
With curious eyes I pore 
Upon the mantel-piece, with precious wares, 



INNS. 23 

Glazed Scripture prints in black, lugubrious frames, 

Filled with old Bible lore : 

The whale is casting Jonah on the shore ; 

Pharoah is drowning in the curly wave ; 

And to Elijah, sitting at his cave, 

The hospitable ravens fly in pairs. 

Celestial food within their horny beaks ; 

On a slim David, with great pinky cheeks, 

A towered Goliath stares. 

Here will I sit at peace, 

While, piercing through the window's ivy veil, 

A slip of sunshine smites the amber ale ; 

And as the wreaths of fragrant smoke increase, 

I '11 read the letter which came down to-day." * 

As a contrast to this, take Longfellow's "Wayside 
Inn," at Sudbury, Massachusetts : — 

" As ancient is this hostelry 
As any in the land may be, 
Built in the old colonial day, 
When men lived in a grander way. 
With ampler hospitality ; 
A kind of old Hobgoblin hall. 
Now somewhat fallen to decay. 
With weather-stains upon the wall, 
And stair-ways worn, and crazy doors. 
And creaking and imeven floors. 
And chimneys huge and tiled and tall. 
A region of repose it seems, 
A place of slumber and of dreams. 
Remote among the wooded hills ! " 

The facilities of modern travel and its vast increase, 
while they have modified the characteristic features of 
the inn, have given it new economical importance ; and 
not long since, the American hotel-system was earnestly 
discussed in the English and French journals as a sub- 
stitute for the European : the method by which all the 
wants of the traveller are supplied at an estabHshed 
* Alexander Smith. 



24 INNS. 

price per diem, instead of the details of expense and 
the grades of accommodation in vogue abroad. In 
Paris, London, some of the West India Islands, and 
elsewhere, the American hotel has, in a measure, suc- 
ceeded. But it is in its historical and social aspect that 
we find the interest of the subject ; as regards conven- 
ience, economy, and comfort, the question can perhaps 
only be met in an eclectic spirit, each country having its 
ov/n merits and demerits as regards the provision for 
public entertainment of man and beast. The inns of 
Switzerland will bear the test of reminiscence better 
than those of any other part of the Continent : the soli- 
tary system of the English inn is objectionable ; discom- 
fort is proverbial in Havana hotels ; the garden-tables 
and music in the German hostels are pleasant social fea- 
tures ; and, with all their frugal resources, the farm-sta- 
tions in Norway boast the charm of a candid and nawe 
hospitality which sweetens the humble porridge of the 
weary traveller. " It is scarcely credible," says an " un- 
protected female," in her record of travel there, " that 
such Preadamite simplicity of heart still exists on 
earth." In pictures and diaries, the German landlord 
is always light-haired, and holds a beer tankard ; and the 
hotels in the British "West Indies, according to a recent 
traveller, are always kept by " fat, middle-aged, colored 
ladies, who have no husbands." Rose, writing to Hal- 
lam from Italy, hints the union of romantic and classi- 
cal associations which some of the inns conserve and 
inspire ; that of Civita Castellana, he remarks, " is on 
the classic route from Rome to Florence, and is a type 
of the large Italian inns such as one finds in romances : 
balconies, terraces, flowers of the south, large courts 
open for post-chaises, — nothing is wanting." When 



INNS. 25 

Heine revisited Germany, lie tells us how the conserv- 
ative habits of his father-land newly impressed him 
in the familiar and old-fashioned dishes, " sour-krout, 
stuffed chestnuts in green cabbages, stockfish swimming 
in butter, eggs and bloaters, sausages, fieldfares, roasted 
angels with apple-sauce, and goose." 

In mediaeval times, in that part of Europe, from the 
isolation of inns they were emphatically the places to find 
an epitome of the age : soldiers, monks, noblemen, and 
peasants surrounded the same stove, shared the contents 
of the same pot, and often the straw which formed their 
common bed ; the proverb was, " inns are not built for 
one ; " the salutations, benisons, and curses, the motley 
guests, the lack of privacy, the trinkgeld and stirrup-cup, 
the murders and amours, the converse and precautions 
the orgies and charities thereof, were each and all char- 
acteristic of the unsettled state of society, the diversi- 
ties of rank, the common necessities, and the priestly, 
military, and boorish elements of life and manners. 
But the rarity of any public house, as we understand 
the term, is more characteristic of those times than the 
incongruous elements therein occasionally exhibited. 
" There seem," says an eminent historian, " to have 
been no inns or houses of entertainment for the recep- 
tion of travellers during* the Middle Ages. This is a 
proof of the little intercourse which took place between 
different nations. The duty of hospitality was so neces- 
sary in that state of society that it was enforced by stat- 
utes ; it abounded, and secured the stranger a kind re- 
ception under any roof where he chose to take shelter." * 

On first entering an inn at Havre de Grace, I found 
the landlady taking leave of the captain of an Ameri- 
* Prescott's Robertson's Charles Fifth, vol. 1, p. 355. 



26 INNS. 

can packet-sliip ; he had paid his bill, not without some 
remonstrance, and his smiling hostess, with true French 
tact, was now in the act of bidding so pleasing a fare- 
well as would lure him to take up his quarters there on 
the return voyage. She had purchased at the market 
a handsome bouquet and tied it up jauntily with rib- 
bons. The ruddy sea-dog face of the captain was half 
turned aside with a look of impatience at the idea of 
being inveigled into good-nature after her extortion ; but 
she, not a whit discouraged, held her flowers up to him, 
and smiling, with^her fair hand on his rough dread- 
naught overcoat, turned full to his eye a sprig of yel- 
low blossom, and with irresistible naivete whispered, — 
" Mo?i cher Capitaine, c'est immortel comme mon attach- 
ment pour vous." It was a little scene worthy of Sterne, 
and brought the agreeableness and the imposition of 
the innkeepers of the Continent at once before me. 
One evening in Florence I was sent for by a country- 
man who lodged at the most famous hotel in the city, 
and found him perambulating his apartment under 
strong excitement of mind. He told me, with much 
emotion, than the last time he had visited Florence was 
twenty years before with his young and beautiful wife. 
The belle of the season that winter was the Marchesa 

. She gave a magnificent ball, and in the midst 

of the festivities took the young American couple into 
her boudoir and sung to them with her harp ; her vocal 
talent was celebrated, but it was a rare favor to hear 
her, and this attention was prized accordingly. " You 
know," added my friend, "that I came abroad to re- 
cover the health which grief at my wife's death so 
seriously impaired ; and you know how unavailing has 
proved the experiment. On my arrival here, I inquired 



INNS. 27 

for the best inn, and was directed hither ; upon enter- 
ing this chamber which was assigned me, something in 
the frescoes and tiles struck me as familiar ; they awoke 
the most vivid associations, and at last I remembered 
that this is the very room to which the beautiful Mar- 
chesa brought us to hear her sing on that memorable 
evening ; the family are dispersed, and her palace is 
rented for a hotel ; hence this coincidence." 

Among the minor local associations to be enjoyed at 
Rome, not the least common and suggestive are those 
which belong to the old Bear Inn where Mohtaigne 
lodged. Not only the vicissitudes but the present for- 
tunes of European towns are indicated by the inns. I 
arrived at ancient Syracuse at sunset on a spring after- 
noon, and dismounted at an inn that looked like an epis- 
copal residence or government house, so lofty and broad 
were the dimensions of the edifice; but not a person 
was visible in the spacious court, and as I wandered up 
the staircases and along the corridors, no sound but 
the echo of my steps was audible. At length a meagre 
attendant emerged from an obscure chamber and ex- 
plained that this grand pile was erected in anticipation 
of the American squadron in the Mediterranean mak- 
ing their winter quarters in the harbor of Syracuse : a 
project abandoned at the earnest request of the King 
of Naples, who dreaded the example of a republican 
marine in his realm ; and then so rarely did a visitor 
appear, that the poor lonely waiter was thrown into a fit 
of surprise, from which he did not recover during my 
stay. 

To the stranger no more characteristic evidence of 
our material prosperity and gregarious habits can be 
imagined than that afforded by the large, showy, and 



28 INNS. 

thronged hotels of our principal cities. They are epit- 
omes of the whole country ; at a glance they reveal the 
era of u23holstery, the love of ostentation, the tendency 
to live in herds, and the absence of a subdued and har- 
monious tone of life and manners. The large mirrors 
and bright carpets which decorate these resorts are en- 
tirely incongruous — the brilliancy of the sunshine and 
the stimulating nature of the climate demands within 
doors, a predominance of neutral tints to relieve .and 
freshen the eye and nerves. It is characteristic of that 
devotion to the immediate which De Tocqueville ascribes 
to republican institutions, that these extravagant and 
gregarious establishments in our country are so often 
named for living celebrities in the mercantile, literary, 
and political world. This custom gives those who en- 
joy this distinction while living " the freedom of the 
house." It greatly amused the friends of our modest 
Geoffrey Crayon, when, encouraged by his affectionate 
kinswoman and his friend Kennedy to " travel on his 
capital," under the pressure of necessity, he once thus 
desperately claimed the privileges of his honored name, 
wherefrom his sensitive nature habitually shrunk. " I 
arrived in town safe," he writes from New York to his 
niece, " and proceeded to the Irving House, where I 
asked for a room. What party had I with me ? None. 
Had I not a lady with me ? No ; I was alone. I saw 
my chance was a bad one, and I feared to be put in a 
dungeon as I was on a former occasion. I bethought 
myself of your advice ; and so, when the book was pre- 
sented to me, wrote my name at full length — ' from 
Sunnyside.' I was ushered into an apartment on the 
first floor, furnished with rosewood, yellow damask, and 
pier-glasses, with a bed large enough for an alderman 



INNS. 29 

and his wife, a bath-room adjoining. In a word, I was 
accommodated completely en prince. The negro wait- 
ers all call me by name, and vie with each other in 
waiting on me. The chambermaid has been at uncom- 
mon pains to jDut my room in first-rate order ; and, if 
she had been pretty, I absolutely should have kissed 
her; but as she was not, I shall reward her in sor- 
did coin. Henceforth I abjure all modesty with hotel- 
keepers, and will get as much for my name as it 
will fetch. Kennedy calls it travelling on one's capi- 
tal." 

The extravagant scale upon which these establish- 
ments are conducted is another national feature, at once 
indicating the comparative ease with which money is 
acquired in the New World, and the passion that exists 
here for keeping up appearances. It would be useful 
to investigate the influence of hotel-life in this country 
upon manners : whatever may be the result as to the 
coarser sex, its eftect upon women and children is 
lamentable, lowering the tone, compromising the taste, 
and yielding incessant and promiscuous excitement to 
the love of admiration ; the change in the very nature 
of young girls, thus exposed to an indiscriminate crowd, 
is rapid and complete ; modesty and refinement are 
soon lost in over-consciousness and moral hardihood. 
But perhaps the most singular trait in the American 
hotel, is the deference paid to the landlord : instead of 
being the servant of the public, he is apparently the 
master ; and a traveller who makes the now rajDid tran- 
sition from a New York to a Liverpool hotel, might 
think himself among a different race ; the courteous 
devotion, almost subserviency in the one case, being 
in total contrast with the nonchalance and even despot- 



30 INNS. 

ism of the other. The prosperous security of the host 
with us, and the dependence of his guest for any choice 
of accommodation, is doubtless the most obvious reason 
for this anomaly ; but it is also, in a degree at least, to 
be referred to the familiarity with which even gentle- 
men treat the innkeepers ; to use a vulgar phrase, they 
descend to curry favor and minister to the self-esteem 
of a class of men in whom it is already pampered 
beyond endurable bounds ; no formula of republican 
equality justifies this behavior ; and it usually reacts 
unfavorably for the self-respect of the individual. Some 
foreigner remarked, with as much truth as irony, that 
our aristocracy consisted of hotel-keepers and steam- 
boat-captains ; and appearances certainly warrant the 
sarcasm. It was not always thus. When Washington 
lodged at the old Walton Mansion-House, which had 
been converted to an inn, the old negro who kept it was 
the ideal of a host ; an air of dignity as well as comfort 
pervaded the house ; through the open upper half of 
the broad door played the sunshine upon the sanded 
threshold ; at the head of the long easy staircase ticked 
the old-fashioned clock ; full-length portraits, by Cop- 
ley, graced the parlor-wall ; the old Dutch stoop looked 
the emblem of hospitality ; no angular figures were 
ranged to squirt tobacco-juice ; no pert clerks lorded it 
from behind a mahogany barricade ; but the glow of the 
windows at night, the alacrity of the sedate waiter, the 
few but respectable guests, and the prolonged meals, of 
which but two or three partook, gave to the inn the 
character of a home. Lafayette wrote to his wife in 
1777, while descanting with enthusiasm upon the sim- 
plicity of manners in this country : " The very inns are 
different from those in Europe ; the host and hostess sit 



INNS. 31 

at table with you and do the honors of a comfortable 
meal ; and on going away, you pay your fare without 
higgling." An English traveller, who visited this coun- 
tiy soon after the Revolutionary War, speaks of the 
"uncomplying temper of the landlords of the country 
inns in America." " They will not," says another, " bear 
the treatment we too often give ours at home. They 
feel themselves in some degree independent of travel- 
lers, as all of them have other occupations to follow ; 
nor will they put themselves into a bustle on your 
account ; but, with good language, they are very civil, 
and will accommodate you as well as they can. The 
general custom of having two or three beds in a room 
to be sure is very disagreeable ; it arises from the great 
increase of travelling within the last few years, and the 
smallness of their houses, which were not built for 
houses of entertainment." 

It is a most significant indication of our devotion to 
the external, that ovations at which the legislators of 
the land discourse, and eulogies that fill the columns of 
the best journals, celebrate the opening of a new tav- 
ern, or the retirement of a publican. The confined 
and altitudinous cells into which so many of the com- 
placent victims of these potentates are stowed, and 
their habits of subserviency to the rules of the house 
which are perked up on their chamber-walls, induced 
a Sicilian friend of mine to complain that sojourners 
at inns in this land of liberty were treated like friars. 
The gorgeous luxury of the metropolitan inns is re- 
versed in the small towns, where, without the pictur- 
esque situation, we often find the discomfort of the 
Continent. 

Under date of March 4, 1634, John Winthrop, first 



32 INNS. 

governor of Massachusetts, records in his journal, 
" Samuel Cole set up the first house of common enter- 
tainment " in Boston. According to the famous lit- 
erary ruse of Irving and Wirt, Knickerbocker's face- 
tious history and the " Letters of a British Spy " were 
found in the inn-chamber of a departed traveller. Of 
old, the American inn, or tavern as it was called, sub- 
served a great variety of purposes. One of New Eng- 
land's local historians says : — 

" The taverns of olden time were the places of resort 
for gentlemen ; and one consequence was, good suppers 
and deep drinking. They also performed the office of 
ncAvspapers. The names posted on the several tavern- 
doors were a sufficient notice for jurors. Saturday 
afternoon was the time when men came from all quar- 
ters of the town to see and hear all they could at the 
tavern, where politics and theology, trade, barter, and 
taxes, were all mixed up together over hot ffip and 
strong toddy. 

"The taverns served also as places for marketing. 
During most of the winter they were filled every night 
with farmers who had brought their pork, butter, grain, 
seeds, and poultry to market. Most families supplied 
themselves through these opportunities, and purchased 
the best articles at moderate prices. 

" Landlords could not grow rich very fast on country 
custom. The travelling farmer brought all his food for 
himself in a box, and that for his horse in a bag. He 
therefore paid only twelve cents for his bed, and as 
much for horse-keeping. It was not uncommon to have 
six days' expenses amount only to two dollars. Auc- 
tions, theatricals, legerdemain, caucuses, military drills, 
balls, and dancing-schools, all came in place at the tav- 



INNS. 33 

ern. Especially, sleigh-riding parties found them con- 
venient." * 

" You will not go into one," wrote Brissot in 1788, 
" without meeting with neatness, decency, and dignity. 
The table is served by a maiden well-dressed and 
pretty, by a pleasant mother whose age has not effaced 
the agreeableness of her features, and by men who 
have that air of respectability which is inspired by the 
idea of equality, and are not ignoble and base, like the 
greater part of our own tavern-keepers." In 1792, 
Wansey, the commercial traveller already cited, tells us 
he lodged at the Bunch of Grapes, in Boston, and 
paid five shillings a day, including a pint of Madeira 
He had an interview with Citizen Genet and Dr. Priest- 
ley at the Tontine near the Battery in New York ; and 
saw Frenchmen with tricolor cockades at the Indian 
Queen on the Boston road ; — trivial data for his jour- 
nal then, and yet now suggestive of the political and 
economical condition of the land, whereof even tavern 
bills and company are no inadequate test. A sagacious 
reminiscent informs us that " the taverns of Boston 
were the original business Exchanges : they combined 
the Counting-house, the Exchange-office, the Reading- 
room, and the Bank ; each represented a locality. To 
the Lamb Tavern, called by the sailors ' sheep's baby,' 
people went to ' see a man from Dedham ' — it was the 
resort of Norfolk County ; the old Eastern Stage-House 
in Ann Street, was frequented by ' down-easters,' cap- 
tains of vessels, formerly from the Penobscot and Ken- 
nebec ; there were to be seen groups of sturdy men 
seated round an enormous fireplace, chalking down 
the price of bark and lumber, and skippers bringing in 

* Brooks's History oflleJ/ord. 



34 INNS. 

a vagrant tarpaulin to ' sign the articles.' To the Ex- 
change Coffee-Hoiise resorted the nabobs of Essex 
County ; here those aristocratic eastern towns, New- 
buryport and Portsmouth, were represented by ship- 
owners and ship-builders, merchants of the first class. 
Dealers in butter and cheese went to the City Tavern in 
Brattle Street — a favorite sojourn of ' members of the 
General Court,' — its court-yard crowded with teams 
loaded with the best pork from Vermont and Western 
Massachusetts, and the ' wooden notions ' of Yankee 
rustics. The last of the old Boston taverns was the 
once famous Elm-Street House, a rendezvous of stage- 
coaches, teams, and transient boarders, which was kept 
up in the old style until fairly drawn from the field by 
' modern improvements.' " Indeed, this slight mention 
of the functions and fortunes of inns in the New Eng- 
land metropolis, hints, more than a volume of statistics, 
the process of her growth and the cause of her social 
transitions ; locomotion has completely done away with 
the local affinities of the past, and emigration modified 
the individuality of class and character which of old 
gave such special interest to the inn ; we ai:e too grega- 
rious, luxurious, and hurried to indulge in these primi- 
tive expedients. 

At the old Raleigh tavern in Virginia, — not long since 
destroyed by fire, — Patrick Henry lodged when he made 
his memorable debut, as a patriotic orator, in the House 
of Burgesses ; and it was in a chamber of this inn that 
he prepared his speeches, and that the great leading 
men of the Revolution, in that State, assembled to con- 
sult. Some of the inns in Canada are named for the 
Indian chiefs mentioned in the earliest record of ex- 
ploration by Cartier. At the Frauncis tavern in New 



INNS. 35 

York, Washington took leave of his officers, and the 
" Social Club " — still famous in the annals of the city 
— met. Military men appreciate good inns ; AYashing- 
ton wrote to Frauncis, and Lafayette praised him. One 
of the latest of memorable associations connected with 
the inns of New York is that which identifies the City 
Hotel with the naval victories of the last war with Eng- 
land. No one who listened to the musical voice of the 
late Ogden Hoffiiian, as he related to the St. Nicholas 
Society, at their annual banquet, his personal memories 
of that favorite hotel, will fail to realize the possible 
dramatic and romantiq interest which may attach to 
such a resort, even in our unromantic times and in the 
heart of a commercial city. Visions of naval heroes, 
of belles in the dance, witty coteries, and distinguished 
strangers, — political crises and social triumphs flitted 
vividly before the mind as the genial reminiscent called 
up the men, women, fetes, and follies there known. A 
recent English traveller in the United States, in allud- 
ing to the resemblance he discovered to what was fa- 
miliar at home, speaks of one relic which has caught 
the eye of few as suggestive of the old country. 
" There is," he observes, " in Baltimore an old inn, with 
an old sign, standing at the corner of Eutaw and Frank- 
lin streets, just such as may still be seen in the towns 
of Somersetshire ; and before it are to be seen old 
wagons, covered and soiled and battered, about to return 
from the city to the country, just as the wagons do in 
our own agricultural counties." "* 

How near to us the record of " baiting at an inn " 
brings the renowned ! " Afler dinner," writes Wash- 
ington in the diary of his second visit to New England, 
* A. Trollope. 



36 INNS. 

" througli frequent showers, we proceeded to the tavern 
of a Mrs. Haviland, at Rye, who keeps a very neat and 
decent inn." Mendelssohn, ideal as was his tone of 
mind, wrote zestfully to his sister : — "A neat, civil 
Frenchwoman keeps the inn on the summit of the 
Simplon ; and it would not be easy to describe the 
sensation of satisfaction caused by its thrifty cleanli- 
ness, which is nowhere to be found in Italy." Lock- 
hart, when an assiduous Oxford scholar, found his 
choicest recreation in " a quiet row on the river, and a 
fish-dinner at Godstow ; " and there is not one of his 
surviving associates, says his biographer, " who fails to 
look back at this moment, with melancholy pleasure 
on the brilliant wit, the merry song, and the grave dis- 
cussion which gave to the sanded parlor of the village 
ale-house the air of the Palaestra at Tusculum, or the 
Amaltheum of Cumae." 

It is impossible to conceive any house of entertain- 
ment more dreary than some of the stage-houses, as 
they were called in New England : the bar-room with 
an odor of stale rum, the parlor with its everlasting 
sampler over the fireplace, weeping willow, tombstone, 
and inscription ; the peacock's feathers or asparagus 
boughs in the chimney as if in cheerful mockery, the 
looking-glass that reflects every feature awry, the cross- 
lights of the windows, inquisitive loungers, pie-crust 
like leather, and cheese of mollified oak, — all defied 
both the senses and digestion, and made the crack of 
the coachman's whip a joyful alarum. 

The inns near famous localities identify themselves to 
the memory with the most attractive objects of travel ; 
thus the inn, so rural and neat, at Edensor, with the 
marvels of Cluitsworth ; the Red Horse at Stratford, 



INNS, 37 

with Sliakspeare's tomb ; and the Nag's Head, at Uxo- 
ter, with Johnson's penance. It was while " waiting for 
the train," at an inn of Coventry, that Tennyson so 
gracefully paraphrased the legend of Godiva ; and the 
sign of the " Flitch " is associated with the famous be- 
quest of the traditional patron of conjugal harmony. 
" A wayside inn at which we tarried, in Derbyshire, I 
fancied must have sheltered Moreland or Gainsborough, 
when caught in the rain, while sketching in that region. 
The landlady had grenadier proportions and red cheeks ; 
a few peasants were drinking ale beneath a roof whence 
depended flitches of bacon, and with the frocks, the 
yellow hair, and the full, ruddy features we see in their 
pictures ; the windows of the best room had little dia- 
mond-shaped panes, in which sprigs of holly were stuck. 
There were several ancient engravings in quaint-looking 
frames on the wall ; the chairs and desk were of dark- 
veined wood that shone with the polish of many a year's 
friction ; a great fire blazed in the chimney, and the 
liquor was served in vessels only seen on this other side 
of the water, in venerable prints. It was a hostel where 
you would not be surprised to hear the crack of Tony 
Lumpkin's whip, or to see the Vicar of Wakefield rush 
in, in search of Olivia, — an ale-house, that you knew 
at once, had often given " an hour's importance to the 
poor man's heart," and where Parson Adams or 'Squire 
Western would have felt themselves entirely at home." * 
Goldsmith has genially celebrated the humble, rustic 
inn in the " Deserted Village," and his own habits con- 
firmed the early predilection. " His favorite festivity," 
says one of his biographers, " his holiday of holidays, 
was to have three or four intimate friends to breakfast 
* A Monlh in England. 



38 INNS. 

with him at ten, to start at eleven for a walk through 
the fields to Highbury Barn, where they dined at an 
ordinary frequented by authors, templars, and retired 
citizens, for ten pence a head; to return at six to 
"White's, Conduit Street, and to end the evening with 
a supper at the Grecian or Temple Exchange Coffee- 
House ; the whole expense of the day's fete never 
exceeded a crown, for which the party obtained " good 
air, good living, and good conversation ; ' " he, Gold- 
smith, however," adds Forster, " would leave a tav- 
ern if his jokes were not rewarded Avith a roar." 
One of Ben Jonson's best comedies is the " New Inn," 
and Southey's most popular ballad is "Mary of the 
Inn." Chaucer makes his Canterbury pilgrims set out 
from an inn at Southwark. We all remember the inns 
described by Scott. Elliston's "larks" at the White 
Hart and Red Cow were comical episodes, that read 
like a vaudeville. " She Stoops to Conquer," " L'Au- 
berge Pleine," and " The Double-Bedded Room," are 
a few of the countless standard plays of which an inn 
is the scene. " W^hat befell them at the Inn," is the 
heading of Don Quixote's best chapters, for the knight 
always mistook inns for castles. Grammont's adven- 
tures frequently boast the same scene, and it was " in 
the worst room of the worst inn " that the accomplished 
and dissolute Villiers died. Foote frequented the Bed- 
ford in Covent Garden, and old Macklin doffed the 
buskin for the apron and carver. Philosophers, from 
Horace, at the inn of Brundusium, to Montaigne, noting 
the furniture, dishes, and prices at the inns where he 
rested on his " Journey into Italy," have found this a 
most suggestive and characteristic theme. 

In German university towns, the professors frequent 



INNS. 39 

the Hereditary Prince, or some other inn at evening, 
to drink beer, smoke pipes, and discuss metaphysics. 
The jocose reproof which Lamb administers to the sen- 
timental donor of " Coilebs " was — 

" If ever I marry a wife, 

I'll marry a landlord's daughter, 
And sit in the har all day, 
And drink cold brandy and water." 

Quaintly pious is the allusion of John Winthrop 
in a letter — more than two centuries old — to his 
father, the first governor of Massachusetts, when the 
project of emigration was about to be realized : " For 
the business of New England, I can say no other thing 
but that I believe confidently that the whole disposition 
thereof is from the Lord ; and for myself, I have seen 
so much of the vanity of the world that I esteem no 
more of the diversities of countries, than as so many 
inns, whereof the traveller that hath lodged in the best 
or in the worst findeth no difference when he cometh to 
his journey's end." * 

It has been said of Socrates that he " looked upon 
himself as a traveller who halts at the public inn of the 
Earth." " Was I in a condition to stipulate with 
death," writes Sterne, " I should certainly declare 
against submitting to it before my friends, and therefore 
I never seriously think upon the mode and the manner 
of this great catastrophe, but I constantly draw the cur- 
tain across it with this wish, that the Disposer of all 
things may so order it, that it happen not to me in my 
OAvn house, but rather in some decent inn." Aaron 
Burr realized in a forlorn manner Yorick's desire when, 

* Life and Letters of John Winthroj), by Robert C Winthrop, 
p. 306. 



40 INNS. 

after years of social ostracism, he expired at a tavern 
on Staten Island. 

The beautiful significance of the first incident in the 
hfe of Christ is seldom realized, offering, as it does, so 
wonderful and affecting a contrast between the hum- 
blest mortal vicissitude in the outward circumstances of 
birth and the highest glory of a spiritual advent : they 
" laid him in a manger because there was no room for 
them in the inn." It was to an inn that the Good Sa- 
maritan carried the traveller who had " fallen among 
thieves." Joseph's brethren rested at an inn on their 
way to Egypt; and it was at the Three Taverns, in 
the suburbs of Rome, that Paul was met by the breth- 
ren. Venerable as are these allusions in sacred history, 
the visible token of the antiquity of inns that strikes 
our imagination most vividly are the wine-stains on the 
marble counter in Pompeii. 

Falstaff absolutely requires the frame of an inn to 
make his portrait intelligible, with the bujiiom figure of 
Mrs. Quickly in the background ; and it may safely be as- 
serted that no public house of entertainment has afforded 
such world-wide mirth as the Boar's Head, Eastcheap. 
The freaks of Tony Lumpkin have their natural scope 
at an ale-house ; and Goldoni's Locandiera is a fine col- 
loquial piece of real life ; even the most eloquent of 
England's historians cites the superior inns that existed 
in the range of travel there, during the early part of the 
seventeenth century, as a reliable evidence of the pros- 
perity and civil advancement of the nation. These inns 
are, in fact, the orig^inal retreats for " freedom and com- 
fort," whence our pleasant ideas on the subject are de- 
rived ; they still exist in some of the rural districts of 
the kingdom ; and the cleanliness, good fare, and retire- 



mNS. 41 

ment of the old-fashioned English inn, as well as the 
freshness and urbanity of the host, wholly justify their 
renown. The exigencies of the climate, and the domes- 
tic habits of the people, explain this superiority ; where 
so much enjoyment is sought within doors, and the na- 
tional character is reserved and individual, better pro- 
vision is naturally made both for the physical well-being 
and the privacy of the wayfarer than is required under 
less inclement skies, and among a more vivacious and 
social race. 

A most characteristic note of Boswell's is that which 
records his idol's hearty encomiums on a tavern, while 
dining at one in London ; both the man and the place 
then combined to realize the perfection of the idea, for 
that dim and multitudinous city invites to secluded con- 
viviality ; and that irritable, dogmatic, yet epicurean sage 
required the liberty of speech, an absolute deference, 
and the solid physical comforts so easily obtained at a 
London tavern. There he could make "inarticulate, 
animal noises over his food " without restraint ; there he 
could bring only such companions as would bear to be 
contradicted, and there he could refresh body and mind 
without fear of intrusion from a printer's devil or needy 
author. Bores and duns away, a good listener by, sur- 
rounded with pleasant viands and a cheerful blaze, a 
man so organized and situated might, without extrava- 
gance, call a tavern-chair the throne of human felicity, 
and quote Shenstone's praise of inns with rapture. Be- 
neath this jovial appreciation, however, there lurks a 
sad inference ; it argues a homeless lot, for lonely or 
ungenial must be the residence, contrast with which 
renders an inn so attractive ; and we must bear in mind 
that the winsome aspect they wear in English literature 



42 INNS. 

is based on their casual and temporary enjoyment ; it is 
as recreative, not abiding places that they are usually 
introduced ; and, in an imaginative point of view, our 
sense of the appropriate is gratified by these landmarks 
of our precarious destiny, for we are but "• pilgrims and 
sojourners on the earth." Jeremy Taylor compared 
human life to an inn, and Archbishop Leighton used 
to say he would prefer to die in one. 





AUTHORS. 

' High is our calling, friend ! Creative Art, 

Whether the instrument of words she use, 

Or pencil pregnant with ethereal hues, 
Demands the service of a mind and heart, 
Though sensitive, yet in their weakest part 

Heroically fashioned — to infuse 

Faith in the whispers of the lonely muse, 
While the whole world seems adverse to desert." 

Wordsworth. 

jOME of the fondest illusions of our student- 
life and companionship were based on liter- 
ary fame. The only individuals, of the male 
gender, who then seemed to us (indiscriminate and 
mutual lovers of literature) worthy of admiration and 
sympathy, were authors. Our ideal of felicity was the 
consciousness of distributing ideas of vital significance, 
and causing multitudes to share a sentiment born in a 
lonely heart. The most real and permanent sway of 
which man is capable we imagined that of ruling and 
cheering the minds of others through the medium of 
literature. Our herbals were made up of flowers from 
the graves of authors ; their signatures were our only 
autographs. The visions that haunted us were little 
else than a boundless panorama that displayed scenes 
in their lives. We used continually to see, in fancy, 
Petrarch beside a fountain, under a laurel, with the 
sweet penseroso look visible in his portraits ; Dante in 
the corridor of a monastery, his palm laid on a friar's 



44 AUTHORS. 

breast, and his stern features softened as he craved 
the only blessing life retained for him — peace ; rustic 
Burns, with his dark eye proudly meeting the curious 
stare of an Edinburgh coterie ; Camoens breasting the 
waves with the Lusiad between his teeth ; Johnson 
appalling Boswell with his emphatic " Sir ; " Milton — 
his head like that of a saint encircled with rays — seated 
at the organ ; Shakspeare walking serenely, and with 
a benign and majestic countenance, beside the Avon ; 
Steele jocosely presiding at table with liveried bailiffs 
to pass the dishes ; the bright face of Pope looming up 
from his deformed body in the cool twilight of a grotto ; 
Voltaire's sneer withering an auditor through a cloud 
of snuff; Moliere reading his new comedy to the old 
woman ; Landor standing in the ilex path of a Tuscan 
villa ; Savage asleep on a bulk at midnight in one of 
the London parks; Dryden seated in oracular dignity 
in his coffee-house arm-chair ; Metastasio comparing 
notes with a handsome prima donna at Vienna ; Alfieri 
with a magnificent steed in the midst of the Alps ; 
Swift stealing an interview with Miss Johnson, or 
chuckling over a chapter of Gulliver : the funeral pyre 
of Shelley lighting up a solitary crag on the shores of 
the Mediterranean ; and Byron, with marble brow and 
rolling eye, guiding the helm of a storm-tossed boat on 
the Lake of Geneva ! Such were a few only of the 
tableaux that haunted our imaginations. We echoed 
heartily Akenside's protest against the sermon on Glory : 

" Come, then, tell me, sage divine, 

Is it an offence to own 
That our bosoms e'er incline 

Towards immortal glory's throne? 
For with me nor pomp nor pleasure, 
Bourbon's might, Braganza's treasure, 



AUTHORS. 45 

So can fancy's dream rejoice, 
So conciliate reason's choice, 
As one approving word of her impartial voice. 

" If to spurn at noble praise 

Be the passport to thy heaven ; 
Follow thou those gloomy ways ; 
No such laAV to me was given ; 
Nor, I trust, shall I deplore me, 
. Faring like my friends before me ; 
Nor a holier place desire 
Than Timoleon's arms acquire, 
And Tully's curule chair, and Milton's golden lyre." 

In our passion for native authors we revered the 
memory of Brockden Brown, and detected in his ro- 
mantic studies the germs of the supernatural school 
of fiction ; we nearly suffocated ourselves in the crowded 
gallery of the old church at Cambridge, listening to 
Sprague's Phi Beta Kappa poem ; and often watched 
the spiritual figure of the " Idle Man," and gazed on 
the white locks of our venerable painter, with his 
" Monaldi " and " Paint King " vividly remembered. 
We wearied an old friend of Brainard's by making him 
repeat anecdotes of the poet ; and have spent hours in 
the French coffee-house which Halleck once frequented, 
eliciting from him criticisms, anecdotes, or recitations 
of Campbell. New Haven people that came in our 
way were obliged to tell all they could remember of 
the vagaries of Percival, and the elegant hospitality of 
Hillhouse. We have followed Judge Hopkinson through 
the rectangular streets of his native metropolis, with 
the tune of " Hail Columbia " humming in our ears ; 
and kept a curious eye on Howard Payne through a 
whole evening party, fondly cognizant of " Sweet 
Home." Beaumont and Fletcher were our Damon and 
Pythias. The memorable occurrence of our childhood 



46 AUTHORS. 

was the advent of a new Waverley novel, and of our 
youth a fresh Edinburgh Review. We loved pkim 
color because poor Goldy was vain of his coat of that 
hue ; and champagne, partly because Schiller used to 
drink it when writing ; we saved orange-peel because 
the author of the " Rambler " liked it ; and put our- 
selves on a course of tar-water, in imitation of Berke- 
ley. Roast-pig had a double relish for us after we had 
read Elia's dissertation thereon. We associated gold- 
fish and china jars with Gray, skulls with Dr. Young, 
the leap of a sturgeon in the Hudson with Drake's 
" Culprit Fay," pine-trees with Ossian, stained-glass 
windows with Keats (who set one in an immortal verse), 
fortifications with Uncle Toby, literary breakfasts with 
Rogers, water-fowl with Bryant, foundlings with Rous- 
seau, letter-writing with Madame de Sevigne, bread 
and butter with the author of W^erther, daisies with 
Burns, and primroses with Wordsworth. Mrs. Thrale's 
acceptance of Piozzi was a serious trouble to our minds ; 
and whether " little Burney " would be happy after her 
marriage with the noble emigre was a problem that 
made us really anxious until the second part of her 
Diary was procurable and relieved our solicitude. An 
unpatriotic antipathy to the Pilgrim Fathers was quelled 
by the melodious paean of Mrs. Hemans ; and we kept 
vigils before a portrait of Mrs. Norton, at an artist's 
studio, with a chivalric desire to avenge her wrongs. 

This enthusiasm for authors was not altogether the 
result of a literary idiosyncrasy or local influences ; it 
grew out of a consciousness of personal obligation. 
Mrs. Radclifle, Miss Porter, and Maturin were the clan- 
destine intimates of childhood ; the English poets be- 
came the confidants of youthful sentiment, which met 



AUTHORS. 47 

but a cool reception from those by whom we were sur- 
rounded ; and when judgment was enough matured to 
discriminate the charms of style, a new world opened 
under the guidance of Mackenzie and Sterne, Lady 
Montagu and Sir Thomas Browne. Books are en- 
deared, like people, by the force of circumstances ; 
ideal tendencies, <x spirit of inquiry, a thirst for sym- 
pathy, will often driv€ minds whose environment is 
uncongenial, to seek therein what is elsewhere denied ; 
and when, in early life, this resource becomes habitual, 
it is not surprising that a deep personal feeling should 
be gradually engendered ; and that we should come to 
regard favorite authors as the most reliable and dearest 
of our companions; and this without an inkling of 
pedantry, or a title to scholarship, but from a thoroughly 
human impulse intellectually vindicating itself To 
such a pitch did the feeling once possess us that we 
resented any imputation cast upon our chosen authors 
as if they were actual friends. We honored the critic 
that defended Bacon from the charge of meanness, and 
longed to applaud his prowess ; we disliked to admit 
the evidence that Johnson was dogmatic, and ascribed 
his arrogance to a kind of excusable horse-play; we 
contended that Thomson was not lazy, but encouraged 
ease to escape ambition ; we grew very warm if any one 
really believed Shelley an atheist, and argued that his 
faith transcended that of the majority of so-called 
Christians ; we never would admit that Sterne was 
heartless, or Moore ,a toady. We could have embraced 
Dr. Madden after reading his " Infirmities of Genius," 
and thought the most brave of Sidney's deeds his " De- 
fence of Poesy." How we longed to go a-fishing with 
Walton, to walk in Cowley's garden, to see Roscoe's 



48 AUTHORS. 

library, to hear Coleridge talk, to feel the grasp of 
Burns's hand, to drink whiskey with John Wilson, to 
pat Scott's dogs, to go to the theatre with Lamb, to 
listen to D' Israeli the elder's anecdotes, to look on the 
lakes of Westmoreland at the side of Wordsworth, and 
to ride through " our village " in Miss IMitford's pony 
chaise ! 

The first time we saw an author was an epoch. It 
was in a church. Some one whispered, just as the ser- 
mon began, that a lady in the next pew was the writer 
of a moral tale then rated high in our little circle. We 
did nothing the rest of the service but watch and specu- 
late upon this, to us, wonderful personage. We were 
disappointed at her e very-day look and attire ; there 
was no fine frenzy in eye or gesture ; there she sat, for 
all the world like any other lady — mild, quiet, and 
attentive. We were somewhat consoled by noting the 
extreme paleness of her complexion, and a kind of 
abstraction in her gaze. Her habiliments were dark 
and faded ; in fact, as we afterward discovered, she was 
poor, and her book had been printed by subscription. 
Thenceforth, for a long time, we imagined all female 
authors were dressed in black, looked pensive, and had 
no color. This illusion, however, was banislied, some 
years later, when we were taken to a literary soiree 
where all the female authors were fat, dressed in a 
variety of colors, and, instead of being melancholy, had 
an overwhelming vivacity that made us realize how the 
type had changed. By degrees we became enlightened, 
and our authormania cooled. In the first place, we 
were shocked by seeing a pathetic writer, whose uni- 
versal tribute was tears, in a flashy vest ; then we en- 
countered a psychologist, whose forte was sublimity, 



AUTHORS. 49 

enacting the part of a mendicant ; it was our misfortune 
to conduct a bard, whose highly imaginative strain had 
often roused our aspirations, home from a party in a 
state of inebriety ; one author we were prepared to love 
turned out a disagreeable egotist ; another wearied us 
by the exactions of his vanity ; a third repelled by in- 
tense affectation, and a fourth by the bitterness of his 
comments ; one, who had written only the most refined 
sentiment, proved, upon acquaintance, an acute Yankee ; 
one who had sung the beauty of Nature we found to 
be an inveterate dandy ; and another, whose expressed 
ideas betokened excess of delicacy, grossly violated the 
ordinary instincts of gentle blood. 

On one of our earliest visits to the illusive 

charm attached to the idea of a female author became, 
indeed, changed to a horror from which we have never 
wholly recovered. We were requested to escort a lady to 
what we understood was an ordinary social gathering. 
After entering a rather small and somewhat obscure 
drawing-room, saluting the hostess and taking the prof- 
fered seat, we were struck with the formal arrangement 
of the company. They formed an unbroken row along 
the walls of the room, except at one end, at which stood 
a table surmounted by an astral lamp ; and in an arm- 
chair beside it, in a studied attitude, like one posed for 
a daguerreotype, sat a woman of masculine proportions, 
coarse features, and hair between yellow and red, which 
fell in unkempt masses down each side of her broad 
face. She was clad in white muslin of an antiquated 
fashion. We noticed that the guests cast looks, partly 
of curiosity, partly of uneasiness, upon this Herculean 
female, who rolled her eyes occasionally, and smiled on 
us all with a kind of complacent pity. We ventured, 
4 



50 AUTHORS. 

amidst the silence, to ask our neighbor the name of the 
gigantic unknown. She appeared extremely surprised 
at the very natural question. " Why, don't you know ? 
We 're invited here to meet her, and, I assure you, it is 
a rare privilege. That is Mrs. Jones, the celebrated au- 
thor of the 'Affianced One ! ' " At this moment, a brisk 
little woman m the corner, with accents slightly tremu- 
lous, and a manner intended to be very nonclialant, 
broke the uncomfortable hush of the room. " My dear 
Mrs. Jones," said she, " as one of your earliest and most 
fervent admirers, allow me to inquire if your health 
does not suffer from the intense state of feeling in 
which you evidently write ? " The Amazonian novelist 
sighed, — it was funny to see that operation on so large 
a scale, — and then, in a voice so like the rougher sex 
that we began to think she was a man in disguise, re- 
plied : " When I reach the catastrophe of my stories, it 
is not uncommon for me to faint dead away; and, as I 
always write in a room by myself, it has happened more 
than once that I have been found stretched, miserable 
and cold, on the floor, with a pen grasped in my fingers, 
and the carpet littered with manuscript blotted with 
tears ! " The Siddonian pathos of this announcement 
sent a thrill round the circle ; glances of admiration 
and pity were thrown upon the self-immolated victim at 
the shrine of letters, and other inquiries were adven- 
tured, which elicited equally impressive replies, until 
the psychological throes of authorship — particularly in 
the female gender — assumed the aspect of an experi- 
ence combined of epilepsy and nightmare. The tragic 
egotism of these revelations at length overcame our 
patience ; and, leaving our fair companion to another's 
escort, we slipped out of the room. A thunder-storm 



AUTHORS. 61 

had arisen ; the rain was pouring down in torrents ; upon 
the door-steps we encountered a very pale, thin, little 
man, with an umbrella under his arm and a pair of 
overshoes in his hands. As we passed, he addressed 
us in a very meek and frightened voice : " Please, sirs, 
is there a party here ? " " Yes." " Please, sirs, is the 
celebrated Mrs. Jones here ? " " Yes." " Please, sirs, do 
you think I could step into the entry ? I 'm Mr. Jones ! " 
Hastening to our lodgings in another metropolis at 
twilight, we passed a dwarf standing on a threshold, who 
leaped down and caught us by the arm, eagerly pro- 
nouncing our name, and requesting a moment's inter- 
view. He led the way to a little room lighted by a single 
candle, closed the door, and, with a quivering impa- 
tience of gesture, introduced himself We remembered 
his name at once. He was the author of a feeble imita- 
tion of Pope. We never beheld such an ogre. His lit- 
tle green eyes, ape-like limbs, and expression indicative 
of sensitiveness and conceit, in that lone and dusky cab- 
inet, were appalling. From a cupboard he took down 
what we supposed to be a ledger, and, placing it on the 
table, gave an emphatic slap to the worn brown cover. 
" There," said he, " is garnered the labor of years. I 
have heard of your enthusiasm for authors, and I will 
read you specimens of a poem destined to see the light 
a twelve-month hence. Listen ! " It was an epic in 
blank verse, — dreary, monotonous, and verbose. His 
recitation was like the refrain of a bull-frog ; it grated 
on the ear and made the nerves shrink. The candle 
burned thick ; the air seemed mephitic, and, in a little 
while, we were oppressed and fevered as by a glamour 
cast over our brain ; we looked toward the door and 
moved uneasily ; the green eye was cast fiercely up from 



52 AUTHORS. 

the page, and the tone of the deformed became mali- 
cious. We had heard of his vindictive spirit, and felt 
as if in the cave of an imp, spellbound and helpless. 
The complacent hardihood with which he read on made 
us inwardly frantic. We thought of the fair being who 
waited for us at a neighboring fireside, of the free air 
we had quitted, and we writhed under the infliction. 
Hours passed ; a numb, half-unconscious sense of mis- 
ery stole over us, and still the little demon glared and 
spouted. " Words, words, words," — how detestable 
seemed they then ! At last, in a fit of desperation, 
we clapped our hand to our forehead, and murmuring 
something about a congestive tendency, sprang up, ran 
through the hall and out the door, and looking back, 
after hurrying on a few yards, beheld the dwarf, with 
his enormous book clasped to his heart, gazing afler us 
with the implacable look of a disappointed savage. 

Literature is no more regulated by accident than na- 
ture ; lucky hits and the tricks of pencraft are as tem- 
porary as all other artificial expedients. The authors 
truly remembered and loved are men in the best sense 
of the term ; the human, the individual informs and 
stamps their books with an image or an effluence not 
born of will or mere ingenuity, but emanating from the 
soul ; and this is the quality that endears and perpetu- 
ates their fame. Hence Goldsmith is beloved, Milton 
reverenced, and the grave of Burns a " Mecca of the 
mind." At the commencement of the last century there 
appeared in the London Gazette the offer of a reward 
of fifly pounds for the discovery of a certain person thus 
described : " A middle-sized, spare man, about forty 
years of age, of a brown complexion and dark brown 
hair, though he wears a wig, having a hooked nose, a 



AUTHORS. 53 

sharp chin, gray eyes, and a large mole near his mouth." 
This was Daniel De Foe, the victim of partisan injus- 
tice, for whose rights every schoolboy would fight now, 
out of sheer gratitude to the author of " Robinson Cru- 
soe." Let the writers who debase authorship into a 
perversion of history, a sickly medium for egotistical 
rhetoric, a gross theft of antecedent labors, a base vehi- 
cle for spite, or a mechanical knack of book-making, 
realize that they are foredoomed to contempt, and that 
character is as little disguised by types as by costume. 
The genuine author is recognized at once ; his integrity 
is self-evident. 

It was sunset on the Arno ; far down the river, over 
mountain ranges where snow yet lingered, a warm tint, 
half rose and half amethyst, glowed along the horizon ; 
beside the low parapet that bordered the street, people 
were loitering back from their afternoon promenade at 
the Cascine : here a priest, there a soldier, now an Eng- 
lishman on horseback, and then a bearded artist ; some- 
times an oval-faced contadina, the broad brim of whose 
finely-woven straw hat flapped over eyes of mellow jet ; 
and again a trig nurse with Saxon ringlets, dragging a 
petulant urchin along ; and over all these groups and 
figures was shed the beautiful smile of parting day, and 
by them, under graceful bridges, flowed the turbid 
stream, its volume doubled by the spring freshets. I 
surveyed the panorama from an overhanging balcony, 
where I stood awaiting the appearance of a friend upon 
whom I had called. Hearing a movement behind, I 
stepped back into the salon, and found a middle-aged 
gentleman seated on a divan near the window. We 
exchanged salutations, and began to converse. He al- 
luded, in unexceptionable English, to the beauty of the 



54 AUTHORS. 

hour. " I come here from Geneva," he said. " There 
I work ; in Italy I recreate ; and it is wonderful how 
this country ministers to intellectual repose, even by the 
very associations it excites. We feel a dream-like re- 
lation with the past, and enter readily, for a time, into 
the dolce far niente spirit of the people; and then re- 
turn to task-work invigorated and with new zest." 
There was a bland, self-possessed, and paternal look 
about this chance acquaintance that insensibly won my 
confidence and respect. He was the image of a wise 
and serene maturity. His ample brow, his strong phy- 
sique, his affable manner and kindly eye, suggested ex- 
perience, intelligence, and benignity. I was certain that 
he was a philosopher of some kind, and fancied him an 
optimist ; but the utter absence of pretension and the 
simple candor of his address gave no hint of a man of 
renown. Accordingly, I soon found myself engaged in 
a most pleasant, and to me, instructive colloquy. Fol- 
lowing up the hint he had thrown out, I spoke of the 
difficulty of combining mental toil with health, — re- 
verting in my own mind to our American race of schol- 
ars, a majority of whom are confirmed invalids. "Ah! *' 
said he, " there is vast error on this subject. Be as- 
sured that we were intended for intellectual labor, and' 
that there is a way of making it subservient to health. 
I will tell you a few rules founded on experience : Vary 
the kind of work, — let it be research one hour, medita- 
tion another ; collation to-day, and revision to-morrow ; 
do this on system ; give the first part of the day to the 
hardest study, the afternoon to exercise, and the even- 
ing to social intercourse ; let the mind be tasked when 
the brain is most vigorous, that is, after sleep ; and woo 
the latter blessing not in the feverish hour of thought 



AUTHORS. 55 

and emotion, but after the gentle exercise of the mind 
which comes from pastime and friendliness." I looked 
at the hale, contented face of the speaker, about whom 
no sign of nervous irritability or exhaustion was discov- 
erable, and asked myself what experience of mental toil 
could have led him to such inferences. He looked like 
a temperate country gentleman, or unambitious and 
well-to-do citizen. He then spoke of the changes he 
observed upon each successive visit to Italy, of the cli- 
mate of Switzerland, and the society of Geneva ; then 
he referred to America, divining at once that it was my 
country, and exhibiting entire familiarity with all that 
had been accomplished there in literature. He betrayed 
a keen sense of enjoyment, recognized a genial influ- 
ence in the scene before us, and gradually infected me 
with that agreeable feeling only to be derived from 
what poor Cowper used to call "comfortable people." 
I led him to speak of his own method of life, which 
was one of the most philosophical order. He consid- 
ered occasional travel and prudent habits the best hy- 
giene for a man of sedentary pursuits ; and the great 
secret both of health and successful industry, the abso- 
lute yielding up of one's consciousness to the business 
and the diversion of the hour, — never permitting the 
one to infringe, in the least degree, upon the other. I 
felt an instinctive respect toward him, but, at the same 
time, entirely at home in his company ; the gentleman 
and the scholar appeared to me admirably fused in, 
without overlaying, the man. Presently the friend we 
mutually expected came in, and introduced me to Sis- 
mondi. I was fresh from his " Italian Republics " and 
" Literature of the South of Europe," and he realized 
my ideal of a humane and earnest historian. 



56 AUTHORS. 

Quite in contrast with this tranquil and robust votary 
of letters was the appearance and manner of Silvio Pel- 
lico. No one who has ever read the chronicle of his 
imprisonments can forget the gentle and aspiring na- 
ture, just blooming into poetic development, which, by 
the relentless fiat of Austrian tyranny, was cut off in 
a moment, from home, intelligent companionship, and 
graceful activity, and subjected to the loneliness, priva- 
tion, and torments of long and solitary confinement ; 
nor is the spirit in which he met the bitter reverse less 
memorable than its tragic detail, recorded with so much 
simplicity, and borne with such loving faith. When I 
arrived in Turin, he was still an object of espionage, 
and it was needful to seek him with caution. Agree- 
ably to instructions previously received, I went to a cafe 
near the Strada Alfieri, just at nightfall, and watched 
for the arrival of an ahbe remarkable for his manly 
beauty. I handed him the card of a mutual friend, and 
made known my wishes. The next day he conducted 
me through several arcades, and by many a group of 
noble - looking Piedmontese soldiers, to a gateway, 
thence up a long flight of steps to a door, at which he 
gave a significant knock. In a few moments it was 
quietly opened ; he whispered to the old serva, and we 
tarried in an antechamber until a diminutive figure in 
black appeared, who received me with a pensive kindli- 
ness that, to one acquainted with Le Mie Prigioni, was 
fraught with pathos. I beheld in the pallor of that 
mild face and expanded brow, and the purblind eyes, 
the blight of a dungeon. His manner was subdued and 
nervous, and his very tones melancholy. I was unpre- 
pared to find, after years of liberty, the effects of his 
experience so visible, and felt almost guilty of profane 



AUTHORS. 57 

curiosity in having thus intruded upon his cherished 
seclusion. I had known other victims of the same infer- 
nal tyranny, but they were men of sterner mould, who 
had resisted their cruel fate by the force of will rather 
than the patience of resignation. Pellico's very deli- 
cacy of organization barbed the arrows of persecution ; 
and when at length he was released, loneliness, hope 
deferred, and mental torture had crushed the energy of 
his nature. The sweetness of his autobiography was 
but the fragrance of the trampled flower, — too unelas- 
tic ever again to rise up in ite early beauty. A smile 
lighted up his brooding expression when I told him of 
the deep sympathy his book had excited in America, 
and he grasped my hand with momentary ardor ; but 
the man too plainly reflected the martyr. The stifling 
air he breathed under the leads of Venice, and the 
damps of his Spielberg cell, seemed yet to weigh upon 
his soul ; no glimmer of the patriotic fire which beams 
from Francesca da Rimini, no ray of the vivacious ob- 
servation that beguiled his solitude and quickened his 
pen, redeemed the hopeless air of the captive poet ; the 
shadow of the power he had braved yet lay on his form 
and face ; and only the solace of filial love and the con- 
solations of religion gave hope to his existence. 

That is but a vulgar idea of authorship which esti- 
mates its worth by the caprices of fashion or the pres- 
tige of immediate success. Like art, its value is intrin- 
sic. There are books, as there are pictures, which do 
not catch the thoughtless eye, and yet are the gems of 
the virtuoso, the oracles of the philosopher, and the 
consolations of the poet. We love authors, as we love 
individuals, according to our latent affinities ; and the 
extent of the popular appreciation is no more a standard 



58 AUTHORS. 

to us than the world's estimate of our friend, whose na- 
ture we have tested by faithful companionship and sym- 
pathetic intercourse. He who has not the mental inde- 
pendence to be loyal to his own intellectual benefactors, 
is as much a heathen as one who repudiates his natural 
kin. Indeed, an honest soul clings more tenaciously to 
neglected merit in authors as in men ; there is a chiv- 
alry of taste as of manners. Doubtless Lamb's zest 
for the old English dramatists, Addison's admiration 
of Milton's poetry, and Carlyle's devotion to German 
favorites were all the msffe earnest and keen because 
they were ignored by their neighbors. In the library, 
an original mind is conscious of special and compara- 
tively obscure friends, as the lover of Nature has his pet 
flower and the lover of Art his favorite old master. It 
is well to obey these decided idiosyncrasies. They 
point, like the divining-rod, to hidden streams pecu- 
liarly adapted to our refreshment. I knew an old mer- 
chant that read no book except " Boswell's Johnson," 
and a black and humpbacked cook whose only imagina- 
tive feast was the " Arabian Nights." 

No one really can, indeed, love authors as a class, 
without a catholic taste. If thus equipped, how inex- 
haustible the field ! He is independent of the world. 
Is he retrospective in mood ? Plutarch will array be- 
fore him a procession of heroes and sages. Does he 
yearn for conviviality? Fielding will take him to a 
jolly tavern. Is he eager for intellectual communion ? 
Landor is at hand with a choice of " imaginary conver- 
sations." Would he exercise causality? Bishop But- 
ler will piit to the test his power of reasoning. Is he 
in need of a little gossip by way of recreation ? Hor- 
ace Walpole will amuse by the hour. Is the society of 



AUTHORS. 59 

a sensible woman wanted ? Call in Maria Edge worth 
or Jane Austin. Is the bitterness of a jilted lover in 
his heart ? '' Locksley Hall " will relieve it. ^Yould 
he stroll in the forest ? Evelyn or Bryant will take him 
there in a moment. By the sea-shore? Crabbe and 
Byron are sympathetic guides. Are his thoughts com- 
prehensive and inclined for the generalities of litera- 
ture ? Open De Stael or Hallam. 

The relation of authorship to society varies with 
political influences and average culture ; the class of 
degraded penwrights so often alluded to by Fielding, 
the ferocious quarrels recorded of and by Pope and 
Johnson v/ith critics and publishers, are phases of liter- 
ary life, which, if not extinct, have become essentially 
modified with the progress of civilization. Yet a quite 
recent quarterly reviewer speaks of this class of men 
as " a kind of ticket-of-leave lunatics " ; and modern 
experiences, if less dark than old annals of Grub Street, 
include some quite as remarkable instances of reckless 
extravagance in prosperity and barbarous neglect in 
adversity. The Bohemian class is confined to no epoch 
or country. Yet charming is the group of authors that 
illustrate and signalize every period of British history, — 
an intellectual alleviation to the monotony of fashion- 
able, and the rancor of political life. Every era of 
French government also has its brilliant salon of phi- 
losophers and poets. Mrs. Carter and Mrs. Montague 
assembled, in their day, as exclusive a coterie as used 
to cluster about Dryden's chair, dine with Sir Joshua 
Reynolds, keep Burns's birthday at Edinburgh with 
Scott at the head of the table, rally at Jeffrey's call, 
dispute with Himie, chat over Rogers's breakfasts, fra- 
ternize with the lakers at Keswick and Grasmere, or 



60 AUTHORS. 

pass an evening with Lamb. From the days of Shak- 
speare to those of Evelyn and Sydney Smith, from 
La Fontaine to Lamartine, from Klopstock to Goethe, 
and from Mather to Channing, every cultivated city 
abroad and at home, has boasted its author circle, to 
which kindred tastes ever revert with zest, and whose 
traditions as well as " works " prolong a spell more 
refined and memorable than any other social prestige. 
Weimar, Bordeaux, Florence, Edinburgh, and Boston, 
as well as London and Paris, are thus consecrated by 
reminiscences of Goethe, Schiller, Montaigne, Alfieri, 
Wilson, Mackenzie, some Concord Sage, or Spanish His- 
torian, some Autocrat, Wizard of the North, or Ettrick 
Shepherd of the pen. To have seen Niccolini on the 
Lung 'Arno ; Elizabeth Browning at a Casa Guidi win- 
dow ; Rossini, the historical novelist, at a bookstore in 
Pisa ; Hillhouse under the New Haven elms ; Hawthorne 
at the Athenaeum ; Elia at his India-house desk ; poor 
Heine on his "mattress grave," or Freiligrath at his 
bank-counter, requires but the perspective of time to be 
as impressive or winsome an experience as the first sur- 
vivors of Pope, Chatterton, Milton, or Burke realized in 
rehearsing their personal cognizance of these famous 
authors. Such is the instinctive attraction of congenial 
or eminent authorship. If this subject were nomencla- 
ted and analyzed in the naturalistic way, there is scarcely 
a sphere of humanity or a form of character which 
might not be identified with or illustrated by author- 
ship ; the mad, the mendicant, the charlatan, — comba- 
tive, contemplative, heroic, and sybarite, — are but a few 
of the varieties which literary biography reveals. Their 
amours, diseases, profits, calamities, triumphs, quarrels, 
personal tastes and habits, domestic life, and most indi- 



AUTHORS, 61 

vidual traits and fortunes, have been minutely recorded, 
so as to form, on the whole, the best and most accessi- 
ble psychological cabinet for the student of human 
nature. Of no other class of men and women with whom 
we never had personal acquaintance, do we know so 
many details ; Chatterton's despair, Young's skull-light, 
Milton's organ, Berkeley's tar-water, Coleridge's opium, 
Swift's lady-loves, Cowper's hymns and hares, Rogers's 
table-talk, Scott's dogs, Steele's debts, Lamb's folios, are 
as familiar to us as if they appertained to some neigh- 
bor or kinsman. The prisons of Cervantes, Raleigh, 
Pellico, Hunt, and Montgomery, have a pathetic charm 
which no other record of captivity boasts. Even the 
self-delusions of authors awaken a considerate interest ; 
the mistaken judgment of Petrarch and Milton, in 
regard to the comparative merit of their writings ; and 
the exaggerated estimate of their own verses by such 
able statesmen as Frederic and Richelieu, tend to en- 
ha:nce the mysteries of the craft and sanction its illu- 
sions. But it must be confessed that the romance of 
authorship is fast disappearing in its reality ; so numer- 
ous have become the votaries of a once rare pursuit, 
so common the renown, so universal the practice, that 
the individual and characteristic, the curious and inter- 
esting elements thereof, are more and more merged in 
the commonplace and familiar. 

A distinction has often been insisted on between the 
critical and the creative in literature ; but modern criti- 
cism, in its best development, is essentially reproduc- 
tive ; so intimate, deep, and affluent is its dealing with 
authors, that they often are restored in all their vital 
worth ; and the process has endeared such writers as 
Lamb, Hazlitt, Carlyle, Arnold, and St. Beuve, as true 



62 AUTHORS. 

intellectual benefactors. Such philosophical and aes- 
thetic interpreters of authorship have engendered an 
eclectic appreciation and enjoyment of authors, and 
made us what Allston calls " wide likers." Hence the 
prevalence and promise of what may be called a cos- 
mopolitan, in distinction to a provincial taste, whereby 
we learn to value the greatest diversities of style, sub- 
ject, and character in literature. Fastidious and severely 
disciplined minds, indeed, coldly ignore certain authors 
and warmly espouse others ; but to a spirit at once gen- 
erous and cultivated, sympathetic and intelligent, though 
a special charm will invest favorite authors, — all of the 
fraternity who are genuine, have a recognized claim to 
grateful recognition ; and even the unequal and incon- 
gruous development of modern English literature inci- 
dent to the absence of what Matthew Arnold calls " any 
centre of intelligent and urbane spirit," like the French 
Academy. Desirable as such a discipline and standard 
is in quelling eccentricity and incorrectness, the free 
and energetic development, the honest, though some- 
times rude, exercise of authorship in our vernacular, 
is no small compensation. We confess a partiality for 
the richly diversified phases of mental life thus in- 
duced, — an eclectic relish for the varieties of national 
and personal characteristics. The artistic French, the 
meditative German, the practical English writers, have 
each their attraction and use ; the desultory style of 
Richter, the quaint individuality of Lamb, the verbose 
dignity of Johnson, the mosaic finish of Gray, the gro- 
tesque eloquence of Carlyle, the flowing rhetoric of 
Macaulay, Wordsworth's pastoral isolation, Scott's feu- 
dal enthusiasm, Byron's intense consciousness, Shelley's 
disinterested idealism, the homely images of Crabbe, 



AUTHORS. 63 

and the sensuous luxury of Keats, are all, in their way 
and at times, accordant with our mental wants, concye- 
nial to our receptive moods. Why should not we toler- 
ate and enjoy the various elements of literature as fully 
and fondly as those of nature and society ? Does it 
not argue a narrowness of mind inconsistent with genu- 
ine, intellectual, and moral health, to perversely confine 
our appreciation of authorship to certain schools, forms, 
and individuals ? Are not the philosophical, the piq- 
uant,~the earnest, the playful, the solemn, gay, impres- 
sive, winsome, acute, wise, and humorous traits and 
triumphs of written thought, as legitimate, in their infi- 
nite variety, as means of human culture, discipline, and 
pleasure, as the myriad tints and tones of Nature, and 
the diversities of character and manners ? A true lover 
of authors will not only find something to enjoy and 
appropriate in the most diverse forms of expression 
and qualities of genius, both in the literature of power 
and in that of knowledge as finely discriminated by De 
Quincey ; but will separate the inspired and the jour- 
neyman work of each author, and do justice to what is 
genuine while repudiating the conventional. If what 
Goethe maintained is literally true, and genuine author- 
ship is the reflex of consciousness upon outward life, — 
then all its spontaneous products must have a vital 
element of human life, love, and truth more or less 
congenial to all readers of candid, clear, and humane 
instincts : for we agree with a liberal and acute critic 
when he says that the gift of literary genius "lies in 
the faculty of being happily inspired by a certain intel- 
lectual and spiritual atmosphere, — by a certain order 
of ideas ; of dealing divinely with these ideas, present- 
ing them in the most effective and attractive combina- 
tions, making beautiful works of them." 



64 AUTHORS. 

It is a new and glorious era in our experience of 
books, when the vital significance of authorship is heart- 
ily realized ; dilletantism, excusable in the novice, gives 
place to the worship of truth ; to write for the mere 
sake of writing, to amuse with the pen, becomes in 
our estimation what it is, — a thing of less interest than 
the most simple and familiar phenomena of Nature; 
as life reveals itself, and character matures, we long 
above all, for reality; we perceive that 'growth is our 
welfare, and that earnestness, faith, and new truth the 
only joy of a manly intellect. Then we read to nerve 
our moral energies, to extend the scope of perception, 
and to deepen the experience of the soul : the butter- 
flies of literature allure no longer ; the imitators we pass 
by ; but the deep thinkers, the original, the brave, lead 
us on to explore, analyze, and conquer. " Literature," 
says Schlegel, " according to the spirit in which it is 
pursued, is an infamy, a pastime, a dry labor, a handi- 
craft, an art, a science, a virtue ; " and this diversity is 
true, not only of authors in general, but sometimes of 
the same individual. Many a poet whose early utter- 
ance was inspired, has degenerated into a hack, a truck- 
ster, and a mercenary penman ; and many a youthful 
dabbler in letters by some deep experience has been 
matured into the bold advocate or heroic pioneer in the 
world of thought. 

We soon learn heartily to sympathize with one of the 
unfortunate originals of Goethe's Werther, and declare 
with him, — "I have resolved in future to take good care 
how T write anything to an author, save what all the 
world may see ; " only extending the prudential resolve 
to conversation, — for whatever advance has been made 
in refinement in the use of language, in the abuse of 



AUTHORS. 65 

confidence modern writers are so destitute of scruples, 
that the sanctities of life and social intercourse have no 
greater or more profane intruder than the author. 

Nor is the " heart of courtesy " the only high quality 
risked by the vocation ; it almost seems, in vain and un- 
chivalric natures, to sap manhood itself; some one has 
said, — '' The man who has learned to read has lost one 
portion of his courage ; if he writes verses, he has lost 
a double portion." There is a fatal fluency, an arro- 
gant expressiveness, whereby the robust and honest 
material of character is, as it were, evaporated in words ; 
for nothing characterizes the genuine author more than 
a reticent tone, an integrity of utterance, which makes 
it apparent that his authorship, instead of a graft, is a 
growth of his best humanity. So proverbial is the 
social barrenness of the craft, in its average conven- 
tional scope, that a facetious Florentine barber, in one 
of the best of modern historical novels (Romola), is 
quite appropriately made to say, — "I am sorely afraid 
that the good wine of my understanding is going to run 
off at the spigot of authorship, and I shall be left an 
empty cask, with an odor of dregs, like many other in- 
comparable geniuses of my acquaintance." All mean- 
ness is disenchanting ; but selfish economy of intellect- 
ual treasures, and egotistical insensibility to the merit 
of others, not only robs the author of all sympathetic 
charm, but almost invariably signalizes his essential 
mediocrity or unfounded pretensions. 

Under the two diverse aspects of an inspiration and 
a career, authorship thus offers the extremes of attrac- 
tion and antagonism to candid and earnest souls ; if the 
spontaneous gift and charm of the former are justly 
endeared to all lovers of humanity, the artificial con- 
5 



66 AUTHORS. 

ditions, worldly motives, and forced relations of the lat- 
ter, often dispel the illusions of fame in the realities of 
vulgar notoriety and mercenary zeal. "We can well 
understand how a reverent, delicate, and true nature, 
like Maurice de Guerin, shrinks from professional au- 
thorship, when the original beauty and truth of his ut- 
terances led his friends to urge that vocation upon him : 
" The literary career," he writes, " seems to me unreal, 
both in its own essence and in the rewards one seeks 
from it ; and, therefore, fatally marred by a secret ab- 
surdity." 

At this moment our vernacular is the only tongue in 
which men can express themselves fearlessly ; it appro- 
priately enshrines the literature of freedom. We sel- 
dom realize this noble distinction of the English lan- 
guage. I was half-asleep one afternoon, in the cabin 
of a steamer in the Bay of Naples, when suddenly the 
violent pitching of the vessel ceased, and I hastened on 
deck to learn the reason of the change, and found, to 
my surprise, that we were returning into the harbor, the 
captain having decided that it was too great a risk to 
venture to sea in such a gale. Pleasant as was the 
transition from tossing waves to smooth water, every 
traveller in that region who has gone through the busi- 
ness of a departure, — the passport signatures, the tussle 
with porters, drivers, and boatmen, the leave-takings, 
packings-up, directions at post-office and banker's, an 
embarkation in the midst of cries, rushings to and fro, 
disputes for gratuities, beggars, missing baggage, at- 
tempts to secure a berth, wringing of hands, waving of 
handkerchiefs, and, it may be, embraces at parting, — 
every traveller cognizant of this experience, will under- 
stand how vexatious it was, within an hour after this 



AUTHORS. 67 

tantalizing process, to find one's self, in travelling cos- 
tume, once more in the city, for the afternoon, with no 
lodging, no appointment, and no sight-seeing to do. I 
was not long in resolving to visit once more my old 
dining-place, the Coro7ia di Ferro. At the opposite 
'table to that at which I was seated, appeared a hand- 
some young man, with a dark, intelligent eye, and a 
bearing indicative of spirit and courtesy. Seeing me 
hesitate over the carte, he suggested a dish which had 
proved molto huono that day, and having followed the 
kindly counsel, we engaged in a desultory chat about 
the weather, the Opera, the last news from France, etc., 
and by the time dessert came on, had established quite 
a pleasant understanding ; at length he made an inquiry 
based upon the idea that he was addressing an English- 
man. I corrected the error, and his politeness at once 
warmed into enthusiasm at the discovery that he was 
talking with an American. After dinner he invited me 
to his apartments. I found the sitting-room adorned 
with pictures and littered with books. Having ordered 
coffee, we were soon engaged in a serious discussion of 
literary subjects, in which my new friend proved a taste- 
ful votary. He wished for a definite statement as to the 
extent of the liberty of the press in the United States. 
I explained it ; and he became highly excited, paced 
the room, quoted Alfieri, sighed, pressed his brow, and 
at length flung himself into a chair, declaring that, if it 
were not for kindred who had claims upon him, he 
would emigrate at once to America. To account for his 
feelings, he showed me a pile of MSS. the publication 
of which had been prohibited by the government cen- 
sors on account of their liberal sentiment. He then 
exhibited several beautiful poems founded on scientific 



68 AUTHORS. 

truths, yet mystically involving great and humane prin- 
ciples, — a ruse he had been compelled to resort to in 
order to express publicly his opinions. As I recog- 
nized the evidences of genius, watched his chafed 
mood, and noted his manly spirit, I felt deeply the 
crushing influence of despotism upon authorship, and 
realized the natural antagonism between poets and 
kings. 

There is no greater fallacy than that involved in the 
notion of an essential diversity between an author and 
his books : professed opinions do not reveal the truth 
of character, but unconscious phases of style, habits of 
thought, and tones of expression, like what is called 
natural language, make us thoroughly acquainted with 
the man. Is not Jeremy Taylor's religious sentiment 
manifest in the very method of his utterance ? Can we 
not see at a glance the improvidence and the fascination 
of Sheridan in the tenor of his plays ? Who would 
not avouch the honesty of John L. Stephens after read- 
ing his travels ? What reverent heart is not magnet- 
ized by the genuineness of devotion in Watts, however 
crudely expressed ? Is not prudence signified in the 
very style of Franklin ? Are we not braced with the 
self-confident frankness of Cooper in the spirit as well 
as the characters of his nautical and forest tales ? Crit- 
ics betray their arrogant temper under the most cour- 
teous phrases ; a gentleman is still a gentleman, and a 
puppy a puppy, on paper as in life ; the sham and the 
true are equally discernible in print and in society. 
Montaigne exhibits his worldly wisdom as plainly in his 
essays as he ever did in his acts. It is not, therefore, 
the insidious but the obvious perils of authorship that 
threaten the novice. Lamentable is it to see mediocre 



AUTHORS. 69 

men take up as a vocation either literature or art, for in 
both a certain amount of character alone insures respect- 
ability ; and this is less requisite in pursuits that do not 
so openly challenge observation. 

One day I was told a gentleman had called and 
waited for me in the drawing-room. As I entered, he 
was gazing from the window in the shadow of a damask 
curtain, which threw a warm tint upon as strongly 
moulded a face as I remembered to have seen in one so 
young. His forehead was compactly rounded, his hair 
curly and raven, and his eye dark and luminous. As I 
approached, he handed me a note of introduction from 
a friend, refused the proffered seat, and wore so earnest 
and grave an expression that I almost thought he was 
the bearer of a challenge. " Sir," he began, " I have 
come to you for sympathy in a great undertaking. I 
wish to be cheered in a mission, encouraged in a ca- 
reer, advised in an experiment ! " There was a certain 
wildness in the manner of this sententious address which 
breathed of an excited fancy. I expressed a willingness 
to aid him to the extent of my humble ability. He drew 
a thick packet from his coat, and proceeded : " I am a 
native of a little village in a neighboring State. My 
father is an agriculturist, and has endeavored to ren- 
der me content with that lot ; but there is something 
/?ere" — and he laid a large red hand on his capacious 
breast — " that rebels against the decree. I aspire to 
the honors of literature. I long to utter myself to the 
world. Here is a tragedy and some lyrics ; and I have 
come to town to test my fortune as an author." I saw 
that he was an enthusiast, and calmly pointed out the 
obstacles to success. He became impatient. I enlarged 
on the healthfulness and wisdom of a country life, on 



70 AUTHORS. 

the precarious subsistence incident to pencraft. His eye 
flashed with anger. I urged him to consider well the 
risk he incurred, the danger of failure, the advantages 
of a reliable vocation, the comfort of an independent 
though secluded existence. He advanced toward me 
with an indignant stride. " Sir," he exclaimed, " I have 
been misinformed ; you are not the man I took you for ; 
farewell, forever ! " and he rushed from the house. Six 
months had elapsed, and I-was sitting over a book in my 
quiet room one day, when a terrific knock at the door 
aroused me, and an instant after the stranger entered 
and impetuously grasped my hand. " Sir, — my dear 
friend, I mean," — he said, " I have done you injustice, 
and I have come to apologize. For a month after my 
former interview, I passed a feverish novitiate, hawking 
my manuscripts around, deceived by plausible members 
of the trade, snubbed by managers, frozen out of the 
sanctums of editors, yawned at by casual audiences, baf- 
fled at every turn, until worn out, mortified, and despair- 
ing, I went home. The feel of the turf, the breath of 
the wind, the lowing of the kine, the very scent of hay 
was refreshing. I thought over your counsel and found 
it true. I now farm the paternal acres on shares, write 
verses during the long winter evenings, lead the choir 
on Sundays, am to marry the pride of the village next 
week, and am here to beg your jDardon, and invite you 
to my wedding." 

The delectable quality of authorship is its imperson- 
ality. Consider a moment the privilege and the immu- 
nity. If we address a nmltitude or an individual, the 
impression may be pleasing or wearisome, but courtesy 
requires that it be endured with equanimity. A book 
is unobtrusive, silent, objective. It can be taken up or 



AUTHORS. 71 

let alone. In it, if genuine, there is a thought that 
craves hospitality to be caught in a favorable mood, as 
the fallow hillock receives the seed borne on the va- 
grant wind. It may take root, and the originator thereof 
has unconsciously given birth to an undying impulse or 
yielded spiritual refreshment. The whole process is like 
that of Nature, — unostentatious, benign, and of ines- 
timable benefit ; and yet how latent, beyond observa- 
tion, secreted in consciousness ! All power of expres- 
sion — whether by means of pen, color, or chisel, — all 
artistic development, — is but a new vocabulary that re- 
veals character. The author and the artist differ from 
their less gifted fellows simply in this, — that they have 
more language ; the endowment does not change their 
natures ; if coarse, artificial, vain, — if brave, truthful, or 
shallow, — they thus appear in books and marble or on 
canvas ; and hence it is that character is the true gauge 
of authorship, and wins or repels confidence, respect, 
and love, in the same proportion as do living men. '• By 
their fruit shall ye know them." Therefore authors 
themselves most effectually disenchant readers. They 
are disloyal to their high mission ; they compromise 
their own ideal, write gossip instead of ti'uth, describe 
themselves instead of Nature, dip their pens in the 
venom of malevolence, corrupt their style with vulgar- 
ity, keep no faith with aspiration, truckle to power and 
interest, and so bring their vocation itself into merited 
disdain. 

How charming, on the other hand, is the sponta- 
neous bard, who sings from an overflowing and musical 
nature I There is a court in one of the most populous 
quarters of London which rejoices in the name of 
Spring Gardens ; doubtless the spot, at one time, was a 



72 AUTHORS. 

rural domain ; at present, a few trees peering over a wall, 
and a retired and quaint look about some of the brick 
domiciles that line the street, alone justify the pleasant 
name it bears. In one of these houses is the office of 
the Commissioners of Lunacy ; and. there, one winter 
morning, I had the satisfaction of a brief tete-a-tete with 
Procter. His plainly cut frock-coat, long and black, 
his white hair and quiet bearing, made him appear a 
curate such as Goldsmith portrayed. It is a curious 
vocation for a poet, — that of testing the wits of people 
suspected of being out of their mind, — and a painful 
one for a sensitive nature to inspect the asylums de- 
voted to their use. But I remembered that Procter's 
early taste drew him into intimate love and recognition 
of the old English dramatists, whose natural element 
was the terrible in human passion and woe ; I consid- 
ered the profoimd tenderness of his muse, and I felt 
that even the tragic scenes it was his duty to witness 
and to study, were not without a certain sad affinity with 
genius. Kean visited mad-houses to perfect his concep- 
tion of Lear; and he who sings of human weal and sor- 
row is taught to deepen and hallow his strain by the 
misery as well as tlie amenities of his life. The heart 
of courtesy, the mood of aspiration, have not been 
quelled in Procter by the stern professional business 
which is his daily task. They loomed up even in 
that dusky office, and kept faith with my previous 
ideal ; but it was especially in the poet's eye that I read 
the spirit of his muse ; ineffably mild and tender is its 
expression, deepening under the influence of emotion 
like the tremulous cadence of music that is born of sen- 
timent. I saw there the soul that dictated " How many 
summers, love, hast thou been mine ? " " Send down 



AUTHORS. 73 

thy pitying angel, God!" and so many other lays of 
affection endeared to all who can appreciate the genu- 
ine lyrics of the heart identified with the name of Barry 
Cornwall. 

With all its occasional disenchantment, my love of 
authors imparted a singular charm to the experience of 
travel ; the lapse of time and new localities united then 
to revive the dreams of youth. What a new grace the 
first view of the hills of Spain derived from the mem- 
ory of Cervantes, and the gleanings in that romantic 
field of Lockhart and Irving ; how rife with associations 
was the dreary night-ride beyond Terracina, near the 
scene of Cicero's murder; and what an intense life 
awoke in desolate Ravenna, at the sight of Dante's 
tomb ! The rustling of dry reeds in the gardens of 
Sallust had an eloquent significance ; the figures on 
Alfieri's monument, in Santa Croce, seemed to breathe 
in the twilight ; the rosemary plucked in Rousseau's old 
garden at Montmorency had a 'scent of fragrant mem- 
ory; in the cafes at Venice, Goldoni's characters ap- 
peared to be talking, and Byron's image floated on her 
waters like a sculptor's dream ; in the Florentine villa 
Boccacio's spirit lingered ; in the Cenci palace Shelley's 
deep eyes glistened ; in the shade of the pyramid of 
Cestus the muse of Keats scattered flowers; on the 
shores of Como hovered the creations of Manzoni, and 
a cliff in Brittany rose like a cenotaph to Chateaubri- 
and ; while the cadence of Virgil's line chimed with the 
lapsing wave on the beach at Naples. I thought, at 
Lausanne, of Gibbon's last touch to the " Rise and 
Fall," and his revery that night; sought the tablet 
that covers Parnell's dust at Chester, craved Montgom- 
ery's blessing at Sheffield, looked for Sterne's monk at 



74 AUTHOB^, 

Calais, and beheld the crown on Tasso's cold temples 
beneath the cypresses of St. Onofrio. De Foe lighted 
up gloomy Cripplegate. Addison walked in the groves 
of Oxford, Johnson threaded the crowd in Fleet Street, 
and Milton's touch seemed to wake the organ-keys of 
St. Giles. But it is not requisite to wander from home 
for such exj^eriences. 

It was a delicious morning in June. I had passed 
the previous night at a village on the Hudson ; a violent 
thunder-storm just before dawn had laid the dust, fresh- 
ened the leaves, and purified as well as cooled the sul- 
try air. Attracted by the sweet breath and vivid tints 
of the landscape, I determined to walk to a steamboat- 
landing four miles off, and on my way make a long-med- 
itated visit to Sunnyside. Taking an umbrageous path 
that wound through a shady lane, I sauntered along, 
sometimes in view of the crystal expanse of Tappan 
Zee, sometimes catching a glimpse of the hoary and 
tufted Palisades, and again pausing under a majestic 
elm on whose pendent spray a yellow-bird chirped and 
swung, or from w^hose dense green canopy a locust 
trilled its drowsy note. The breeze was scented with 
clover and woodbine ; sleek cattle grazed in the mead- 
ows ; amber clouds flecked a heaven of azure ; fields of 
grain waved like a shoreless lake of plumes ; the maize 
stood thick and tasselled ; the lofty chestnuts shook their 
feathery bloom ; now and then a solitary crow hovered 
above, or a brown robin hopped cheerily by the wayside. 
It was one of those clear, serene, luxurious days of 
early summer which, in our capricious climate, occasion- 
ally unite the gorgeous hues of the Orient with the balm 
and the softness of Italy ; pearly outlines stretched along 
the hills, the broad river gleamed in sunshine, and every 



AUTHORS. 75 

shade of emerald flashed or deepened over the wide 
groves and teeming farms. As I drew near to Irving's 
cottage, the bees were contentedly humming round 
the locusts, and the ivy-leaves, that clustered thickly 
about the old gables, were dripping with the tears of 
night ; every bugle of the honeysuckle was a delicate 
censer, and the turf and hedge wore their brightest col- 
ors; even the old weathercock, trophy of an ancient 
colonial Stadt-house, dazzled the eye as it caught the 
lateral rays of the sun ; the fowls strutted about with 
unwonted complacency, and the house-dog bounded 
through the beaded grass as if exhilarated by the scene. 
On the veranda that overlooks the river, from which it 
is divided by a little grove, sat our favorite author, with 
a book on his knee, the embodiment of thoughtful con- 
tent. His home looked the symbol of his genius, and 
his expression the reflex of his life. - They harmonized 
with a rare completeness, and fulfilled to the heart the 
picture which imagination had drawn. Here was no 
castle in the air, but a realized day-dream. Sleepy Hol- 
low was at hand : an English cottage, like that to which 
poor Leslie brought his angel wife ; a Dutch roof such 
as covered Van Tassell's memorable feast ; the stream 
up which floated the incorrigible Dolph ; the mountain 
range whose echoes resounded with the mysterious 
bowls, and where Rip took his long nap, — all identified 
with the author's virgin fame, — gave the vital interest 
of charming association to the silent grace of Nature ; 
and, above all, the originator of the spell was there, as 
genial, humorous, and imaginative, as if he had never 
wandered from the primal haunts of his childhood and 
his fame. That he had done so, and to good purpose, 
however, was evident in his conversation. News had 



76 AUTHORS. 

just arrived of a new French emeute, and that led us to 
speak of the first Revolution ; and Irving gave some 
impressive reminiscences of his visits to the localities 
of Paris which are identified with those scenes of vio- 
lence and blood. He recurred to them with keen sen- 
sibility and in graphic details. It was delightful thus 
to commune with a man whose name was associated 
with my first conscious relish of native authorship, and 
detect the same moral zest and picturesque insight in 
his talk which so lons^ asio had endeared his writing^s. 
I felt anew the conservative power of a love of Nature 
and an artistic organization ; they had kept thus fresh 
the sympathies and thus enjoyable the mind. Retire- 
ment was as grateful now as when he sought it as a ju- 
venile dreamer ; the noble river won as fond a glance 
as when first explored as a truant urchin ; and the 
kindly spirit beamed as truly in his smile as when he 
mused in the Alhambra, or walked to Melrose with 
Scott for a cicerone. My authormania revived in all its 
original fervor ; here were the mellow hues on the pict- 
ure that beguiled my boyhood ; and the man, the scene 
and the author blended in a graceful unity of effect, 
without a single incongrTiity. 




PICTURES. 



" Look on this picture and on this. 



Hamlet. 



p^l'T is not surprising that pictures, with all their 
1 fi I attraction for eye and mind, are, to many hon- 
»^31 est and intelligent people, too much of a riddle 



to be altogether pleasant. What with the oracular dicta 
of self-constituted arbiters of taste, the discrepancies 
of popular writers on Art, the jargon of connoisseur- 
ship, the vagaries of fashion, the endless theories about 
color, style, chiaroscuro composition, design, imitation, 
nature, schools, etc., painting has become rather a sub- 
ject for the gratification of vanity and the exercise 
of pedantic dogmatism, than a genuine source of en- 
joyment and culture, of sympathy and satisfaction, — 
like music, literature, scenery, and other recognized 
intellectual recreations. In these latter spheres it is 
not thought presumptuous to assert and enjoy individual 
taste ; the least independent talkers will bravely advo- 
cate their favorite composer, describe the landscape 
which has charmed or the book which has interested 
them ; but when a picture is the subject of discussion, 
few have the moral courage to say what they think ; 
there is a self-distrust of one's own impressions, and 
even convictions, in regard to what is represented on 
canvas, that never intervenes between thought and ex- 



78 PICTURES. 

pression, where ideas or sentiments are embodied in 
writing or in melody. Nor is this to be ascribed wholly 
to the technicalities of pictorial art, in which so few are 
deeply versed, but, in a great measure, to the incongru- 
ous and irrelevant associations which have gradually 
overlaid and mystified a subject in itself as open to the 
perception of a candid mind and healthy senses as any 
other department of human knowledge. Half the want 
of appreciation of pictures arises from ignorance, not 
of the principles of Art, but of the elements of Nature. 
Good observers are rare. The peasant's criticism upon 
Moreland's " Farm-yard " — that three pigs never eat 
together without one foot at least in the trough — was 
a strict inference from personal knowledge of the habits 
of the animal ; so the surgeon found a head of the Bap- 
tist untrue, because the skin was not withdrawn some- 
what from the line of decollation. These and similar 
instances show that some knowledge of or interest in 
the thing represented, is essential to the appreciation 
of pictures. Sailors and their wives crowded around 
Wilkie's " Chelsea Pensioners," * when first exhibited ; 
French soldiers enjoy the minutiae of Vernet's battle- 
pieces ; a lover can judge of his betrothed's miniature ; 
and the most unrefined sportsman will point out the 
niceties of breed in one of Landseer's dogs. To the 
want of correspondence so frequent between the sub- 
ject of a picture and the observer's experience, may, 
therefore, be attributed no small degree of the prevalent 
want of sympathy and confident judgment. '• Gang into 
an Exhibition," says the Ettrick Shepherd, " and only 

* "I would not" observes "Washingtou Irving in one of his letters, 
" give an hour's conversation Avith Wilkie about paintings, in his ear- 
nest but precise and original enthusiasm, for all the enthusiasm and 
declamation of the common run of amateurs and artists." 



PICTURES. 79 

look at a crowd o' cockneys, some with specs, and some 
wi' quizzing-glasses, and faces without ae grain o' mean- 
ing in them o' ony kind whatsomever, a' glowering, per- 
haps, at a picture o' one o' Nature's maist fearfu' or 
magnificent warks ! What, I ask, could a Prince's- 
Street maister or missy ken o' sic a wark mair than a 
red deer wad ken o' the inside o' George's-Street As- 
sembly-Rooms ? " 

The incidental associations of pictures link them to 
history, tradition, and human character, in a manner 
which indefinitely enhances their suggestiveness. Hor- 
ace Walpole wove a standard collection of anecdotes 
from the lives and works of painters. The frescos of 
St. Mark's, at Florence, have a peculiar significance to 
the spectator familiar with Fra Angelico's life. One 
of the most pathetic and beautiful tragedies in modern 
literature is that which a Danish poet elaborated from 
Correggio's artist career. Lamb's great treasure was a 
print from Da Vinci, which he called " My Beauty," 
and its exhibition to a literal Scotchman gave rise to 
one of the richest jokes in Elia's record. The pen- 
drawing Andre made of himself the night before his 
execution, — the curtain painted in the space where 
Faliero's portrait should have been, in the ducal palace 
at Venice, — and the head of Dante, discovered by Mr. 
Kirkup, on the wall of the Bargello, at Florence, — 
convey impressions far beyond the mere lines and hues 
they exhibit ; each is a drama, a destiny. And the hard 
but true lineaments of Holbein, the aerial grace of 
Malbone's " Hours," Albert Durer's medieval sancti- 
ties, Overbeck's conservative self-devotion, a market- 
place by Ostade, Reynolds's " Strawberry Girl," one of 
Copley's colonial grandees in a New England farmer's 



80 PICTURES. 

parlor, a cabinet gem by Greuze, a dog or slieep of 
Landseer's, the misty depths of Turner's " Carthage," 
Domenichino's " Sibyl," Claude's " Sunset," or Allston's 
" Rosalie," — how much of eras in Art, events in his- 
tory, national tastes, and varieties of genius do they each 
foreshadow and embalm ! Even when no special beauty 
or skill is manifest, the character of features transmitted 
by pictorial art, their antiquity or historical significance, 
often lends a mystery and meaning to the effigies of 
humanity. In the carved faces of old German church 
choirs and altars, the existent facial peculiarities of race 
are curiously evident ; a Grecian life breathes from 
many a profile in the Elgin marbles, and a sacred mar- 
vel invests the exhumed giants of Nineveh ; in the car- 
toons of Raphael, and the old Gobelin tapestries, are 
hints of what is essential in the progress and the tri- 
umphs of painting. Considered as a language, how 
definitely is the style of painters associated with special 
forms of character and spheres of life ! " There cer- 
tainly never was a painter," — says a traveller in Spain 
of Murillo, — " who, without much imagination, and tell- 
ing no story, could yet vision his eyes with such pure 
love, and make lips so parting with prayer as Murillo ; 
himself a father, he loved to paint the child-Saviour in 
conjunction with thin-faced saints." It is this variety 
of human experience, typified and illustrated on canvas, 
that forms our chief obligations to the artist ; through 
him our perception of and acquaintance with our race, 
its individuality and career, its phases and aspects, is 
indefinitely enlarged. " The greatest benefit," says a 
late writer, " we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet, 
or novelist, is the extension of our sympathies. Art is 
the nearest thing to life ; it is a mode of amplifying our 



PICTURES. 81 

experience and extending our contact with our fellow- 
creatures beyond the bounds of our personal lot." 

"A room with pictures in it, and a room without pict- 
ures," says an aesthetic essayist, " differ by nearly as 
much as a room with windows and a room without win- 
dows. Nothing, we think, is more melancholy, particu- 
larly to a person who has to pass much time in his room, 
than blank walls with nothing on them ; for pictures 
are loopholes of escape to the soul, leading it to other 
spheres. It is such an inexpressible relief to the per- 
son engaged in writing, or even reading, on looking up, 
not to have his line of vision chopped square off by an 
odious white wall, but to find his soul escapino-, as it 
were, through the frame of an exquisite picture, to other 
beautiful, and perhaps idyllic scenes, where the fancy 
for a moment may revel, refreshed and delighted. Is it 
winter in your world ? Perhaps it is summer in the 
picture ; what a charming momentary change and con- 
trast ! And thus pictures are consolers of loneliness ; 
they are a sweet flattery to the soul ; they are a relief 
to the jaded mind ; they are windows to the imprisoned 
thought; they are books; they are histories and ser- 
mons — which we can read without the trouble of turn- 
ing over the leaves." 

The effect of a picture is increased by isolation and 
surprise. I never realized the physiognomical traits 
of Madame de Maintenon, until her portrait was en- 
countered in a solitary country-house, of whose draw- 
ing-room it was the sole ornament ; and the romance of 
a miniature by Malbone first came home to me, when an 
ancient dame, in the costume of the last century, with 
trembling fingers drew one of he;* husband from an an- 
tique cabinet, and descanted on the manly beauty of the 



82 PICTURES. 

deceased original, and the graceful genius of the young 
and lamented artist. Plazlitt wrote an ingenious essay on 
"A Portrait by Vandyck," which gives us an adequate 
idea of what such a masterpiece is to the eye and mind 
of genuine artistic perception and sympathy. Few sen- 
sations, or rather sentiments, are more inextricably 
made up of pleasure and sadness than that with which 
we contemplate (as is not infrequent in some old gallery 
of Europe) a portrait which deeply interests or power- 
fully attracts us, and whose history is irrevocably lost. 
A better homily on the evanescence of human love and 
fame can scarcely be imagined : a face alive with moral 
personality and human charms, such as win and warm 
our stranger eyes, — yet the name, subject, artist, owner, 
all lost in oblivion ! To pause before an interesting but 
*' unknown portrait " is to read an elegy as pathetic as 
Gray's. 

The mechanical processes by which Nature is so 
closely imitated, and the increase of which during the 
last few years is one of the most remarkable facts in 
science, may, at the first glance, appear to have lessened 
the marvellous in Art, by making available to all the 
exact representation of still-life. But, when duly con- 
sidered, the effect is precisely the reverse ; for exactly 
in proportion as we become familiar with the mechani- 
cal production of the similitudes of natural and artificial 
objects, do we instinctively demand higher powers of 
conception, greater spiritual expression in the artist. 
The discovery of Daguerre and its numerous improve- 
ments, and the unrivalled precision attained by photog- 
raphy, render exact imitation no longer a miracle of 
crayon or palette ; these must now create as well as re- 
flect, invent and harmonize as well as copy, bring out the 



PICTURES. 83 

soul of the individual and of the landscape, or their 
achievements will be neglected in favor of the fac-simi- 
les obtainable through sunshine and chemistry. The 
best photographs of architecture, statuary, ruins, and, in 
some cases, of celebrated pictures, are satisfactory to a 
degree which has banished mediocre sketches, and even 
minutely finished but literal pictures. Specimens of 
what is called " Nature-printing," which gives an im- 
pression directly from the veined stone, the branching 
fern, or the sea-moss, are so true to the details as to 
answer a scientific purpose ; natural objects are thus 
lithographed without the intervention of pencil or ink. 
And these several discoveries have placed the results 
of mere imitative art within reach of the mass ; in other 
words, her prose language, that which mechanical sci- 
ence can utter, is so universal, that her poetry, that 
which must be conceived and expressed through indi- 
vidual genius, the emanation of the soul, is more dis- 
tinctly recognized and absolutely demanded from the 
artist, in order to vindicate his claim to that title, than 
ever before. 

Perhaps, indeed, the scope which Painting offers to 
experimental, individual, and prescriptive taste, the loy- 
alty it invokes from the conservative, the " infinite pos- 
sibilities " it offers to the imaginative, the intimacy it 
promotes with Nature and character, are the cause of so 
much originality and attractiveness in its votaries. The 
Lives of Painters abound in the characteristic, the ad- 
venturous, and the romantic. Open Vasari, Walpole, 
or Cunningham, at random, and one is sure to light 
upon something odd, genial, or exciting. One of the 
most popular novelists of our day assured me, that, in 
his opinion, the richest unworked vein for his crail, 



84 PICTURES. 

available in these days of civilized uniformity, is artist- 
life at Rome, to one thoroughly cognizant of its humors 
and aspirations, its interiors and vagrancies, its self-de- 
nials and its resources. I have sometimes imagined 
what a story the old white dog who so long frequented 
the Lepri and the CafFe Greco, and attached himself so 
capriciously to the brother artists of his deceased mas- 
ter, could have told, if blest with memory and language. 
Pie had tasted the freedom and the zest of artist-life in 
Rome, and scorned to follow trader or king. He pre- 
ferred the odor of canvas and oil to that of conserva- 
tories, and had more frolic and dainty morsels at an 
al fresco of the painters, in the Campagna, than the 
kitchen of an Italian prince could furnish. His very 
name betokened good cheer, and was pronounced after 
the manner of the pert waiters who complacently enun- 
ciate a few words of English. Bif-steck was a privi- 
leged dog ; and though occasionally made the subject 
of a practical joke, taught absurd tricks, sent on fools* 
errands, and his white coat painted like a zebra, these 
were but casual troubles ; he was a sensible dog to de- 
spise them, when he could enjoy such quaint compan- 
ionship, behold such experiments in color and drawing, 
serve as a model himself, and go on delicious sketching 
excursions to Albano and Tivoli, besides inhaling to- 
bacco-smoke and hearing stale jests and love soliloquies 
ad infinitum. I am of Bif-stech'' s opinion. There is no 
such true, earnest, humorous, and individual life, in 
these days of high civilization, as that of your genuine 
painter ; impoverished as it often is, baffled in its aspi- 
rations, unregarded by the material and the worldly, it 
often rears and keeps pure bright, genial natures whose 
contact brings back the dreams of youth. It is pleas- 



PICTURES. 85 

ant, too, to realize, in a great commercial city, that man 
<' does not live by bread alone," that fun is better than 
furniture, and a private resource of nature more pro- 
lific of enjoyment than financial investments. It is rare 
comfort, here, in the land of bustle and sunshine, to sit 
in a tempered light and hear a man sing or improvise 
stories over his work ; to behold once more vagaries of 
costume ; to let the eye rest upon pictorial fragments of 
Italy, — the " old familiar faces " of Roman models, the 
endeared outlines of Apennine hills, the contadina bod- 
ice and the brigand hat, until these objects revive to the 
heart all the romance of travel. 

Vernet's sympathies were excited by the misfortunes 
of a worthy tradesman of Marseilles, and he attended 
the sheriff's auction at the bankrupt's house, where, 
among the crowd, he recognized a would-be connoisseur 
in art, of ample wealth ; the painter fixed his eyes upon 
a dim and mediocre picture on the wall, and bid fifteen 
francs ; immediately the rich amateur scented a prize ; 
a long contest ensued, and at length the picture was 
knocked off to Vernet's antagonist for so large a sum 
that the honest bankrupt was enabled to pay his credi- 
tors in full, and recommence business with a handsome 
capital. With the progress of civilization pictures have 
grown in permanent market value : a Quaker who in- 
curred the reproach of his brethren for securing a 
Wouverman for a large sum, w'as excused for this " van- 
ity " by his shrewd friends, when he demonstrated to 
them that he had made an excellent investment. Lit- 
erature affords many illustrations of the romance of the 
pictorial art, of which, among our own authors, Allston 
and Hawthorne have given memorable examples in 
" Monaldi," and " Twice-Told Tales." Unknown portraits 



86 PICTURES. 

have inspired the most attractive conjectures, and about 
the best known and most fascinating hover an atmosphere 
of intensely personal interest or historical association. 
Vasari, Mrs. Jameson, Hazlitt, and other art -writers 
have elaborated the most delectable facts and fancies 
from this vast individual sphere of the picturesque. 

The technicalities of Art, its refinements of style, its 
absolute significance, are, indeed, as dependent for ap- 
preciation on a special endowment as are mathematics ; 
but the general and incidental associations, in which is 
involved a world of poetry, may be enjoyed to the full 
extent by those whose perception of form, sense of color, 
and knowledge of the principles of sculpture, painting, 
music, and architecture are notably deficient. It is a 
law of life and nature, that truth and beauty, adequately 
represented, create and diffuse a limitless element of 
wisdom and pleasure. Such memorials are talismanic, 
and their influence is felt in all the higher and more 
permanent spheres of thought and emotion ; they are 
the gracious landmarks that guide humanity above the 
commonplace and the material, along the " line of infi- 
nite desires." Art, in its broad and permanent mean- 
ing, is a language, — the language of sentiment, of char- 
acter, of national impulse, of individual genius ; and for 
this reason it bears a lesson, a charm, or a sanction to 
all, — even those least versed in its rules and least alive 
to its special triumphs. Sir Walter Scott was no ama- 
teur, yet, through his reverence for ancestry and his 
local attachments, portraiture and architecture had for 
him a romantic interest. Sydney Smith was impatient 
of galleries when he could talk with men and women, 
and made a practical joke of buying pictures ; yet New- 
ton and Leslie elicited his best humor. Talfourd cared 



PICTURES. 87 

little and knew less of the treasures of the Louvre, but 
lingered there because it had been his friend Hazlitt's 
Elysium. Indeed, there are constantly blended associ- 
ations in the history of English authors and artists ; 
Reynolds is identified with Johnson and Goldsmith, 
Smibert with Berkeley, Barry with Burke, Constable and 
Wilkie with Sir George Beaumont, Hay don with Words- 
worth, and Leslie with Irving ; the painters depict their 
friends of the pen, the latter celebrate in verse or prose 
the artist's triumphs, and both intermingle thought and 
sympathy ; and from this contact of select intelligences 
of diverse vocation has resulted the choicest wit and the 
most genial companionship. If from special we turn to 
general associations, from biography to history, the same 
prolific aflSnities are evident, whereby the artist becomes 
an interpreter of life, and casts the halo of romance 
over the stern features of reality. Hampton Court is 
the almost breathing society of Charles the Second's 
reign ; the Bodleian Gallery is vivid with Britain's past 
intellectual life ; the history of France is pictured on 
the walls of Versailles ; the luxury of color bred by the 
sunsets of the Euganean hills, the waters of the Adri- 
atic, the marbles of San Marco, and the skies and at- 
mosphere of Venice, are radiant on the canvas of Titian, 
Tintoretto, and Paul Veronese; Michel Angelo has 
embodied the soul of his era and the loftiest spirit 
of his country ; Salvator typified the half-savage pic- 
turesqueness, Claude the atmospheric enchantments, 
Carlo Dolce the effeminate grace, Titian the voluptuous 
energy, Guido the placid self-possession, and Raphael 
and Correggio the religious sentiment of Italy; Wat- 
teau put on canvas the fete champetre ; the peasant- 
life of Spain is pictured by Murillo, her asceticism by 



88 PICTURES. 

the old religious limners; what English rustics were 
before steam and railroads, Gainsborough and More- 
land reveal ; Wilkie has permanently symbolized Scotch 
shrewdness and domesticity, and Lawrence framed and 
fixed the elegant shapes of a London drawing-room; 
and each of these is a normal type and suggestive ex- 
emplar to the imagination, a chapter of romance, a se- 
questration and initial token of the characteristic and 
the historical, either of what has become traditional or 
what is forever true. 

The indirect service good artists have rendered by 
educating observation has yet to be acknowledged. The 
Venetian painters cannot be even superficially regarded, 
without developing the sense of color; nor the Roman, 
without enlarging our cognizance of expression ; nor the 
English, without refining our perception of the evanes- 
cent effects in scenery. Raphael has made infantile 
grace obvious to uimiaternal eyes ; Turner opened to 
many a preoccupied vision the wonders of atmosphere ; 
Constable guided our perception of the casual phenom- 
ena of wind ; Landseer, that of the natural language 
of the brute creation ; Lely, of the coiffure ; IMichel 
Angelo, of physical grandeur ; Rolfe, of fish ; Gerard 
Dow, of water ; Cuyp, of meadows ; Cooper, of cattle ; 
Stanfield, of the sea ; and so on through every depart- 
ment of pictorial art. Insensibly these quiet but per- 
suasive teachers have made every phase and object of 
the material world interesting, environed them with 
more or less of romance, by such revelations of their 
latent beauty and meaning ; so that, thus instructed, the 
sunset and the pastoral landscape, the moss-grown arch 
and the craggy seaside, the twilight grove and the sway- 
ing cornfield, an old mill, a peasant, light and shade, 



PICTURES. 89 

form and feature, perspective and anatomy, a smile, a. 
Ite^- gesture, a cloud, a waterfall, weather-stains, leaves, 
n,^^^ "^ •'eer, — every object in Nature, and every impress of 
N^tlie elements, speaks more distinctly to the eye and 
more effectively to the imagination. 

The vicissitudes which sometimes attend a picture or 
statue furnish no inadequate materials for narrative in- 
terest. Amateur collectors can unfold a tale in refer- 
ence to their best acquisitions which outvies fiction. 
Beckford's table-talk abounded in such reminiscences. 
An American artist, who had resided long in Italy, and 
made a study of old pictures, caught sight at a shop- 
window in New Orleans of an "Ecce Homo" so pathetic 
in expression as to arrest his steps and engross his at- 
tention. Upon inquiry, he learned that it had been pur- 
chased of a soldier fresh from Mexico, after the late 
war between that country and the United States ; he 
bought it for a trifle, carried it to F.urope, and soon au- 
thenticated it as an original Guercino, painted for the 
royal chapel in Madrid, and sent thence by the govern- 
ment to a church in Mexico, whence, after centuries, it 
had found its way, through the accidents of war, to a 
pawnbroker's shop in Louisiana. A lady in one of our 
eastern cities, wishing to possess, as a memorial, some 
article which had belonged to a deceased neighbor, and 
not having the means, at the public sale of her effects, 
to bid for an expensive piece of furniture, contented 
herself with buying for a few shillings a familiar chim- 
ney-screen. One day she discovered a glistening sur- 
face under the flowered paper which covered it, and 
when this was torn away, there stood revealed a picture 
of Jacob and Rebecca at the Well, by Paul Veronese; 
doubtless thus concealed with a view to its secret re- 



90 PICTURES, 

moval during the first French Revohition. The missing 
Charles First of Velasquez was lately exhibited in this 
country, and the account its possessor gives of the mode 
of its discovery and the obstacles which attended the 
establishment of its legal ownership in England is a 
remarkable illustration both of the tact of the connois- 
seur and the mysteries of jurisprudence.* 

Political vicissitudes not only cause pictures to emi- 
grate like their owners, but to change their costume — 
if we may so call a frame — with equal celerity : that 
which now encloses Peale's Washington, at Princeton^ 
once held the portrait of George the Third ; and there 
is an elaborate old frame which holds the likeness of a 
New P^ngland poet's grandfiither whence was hurriedly 
taken the portrait of Governor Hutchinson, in antici- 
pation of a domiciliatory visit from the " Sons of Lib- 
erty." 

There is scarcely, indeed, an artist or a patron of art, 
of any eminence, who has not his own " story of a pic- 
ture." Like all things of beauty and of fame, the very 
desire of possession which a painting excites, and the 
interest it awakens, give rise to some costly sacrifice, or 
incidental circumstance, which associates the prize with 
human fortune and sentiment. 

A friend of mine, in exploring the more humble class 

* One of the recently discovered gems of pictorial art in Florence is 
the "coach-house picture "; so called from being a fresco on a stable- 
wall; and under the head of "Romance of a Portrait," the "London 
AtheniBum " publishes a statement Avhich seems to show conclusively 
that the famous portrait of Addison at Holland House, which has been 
copied and engraved time and again, and has been mentioned as au- 
thentic by Macaulay, is in fact not a portrait of Addison, but a portrait 
of Sir Andrew Fountaine, of Narford Hall, in Norfolk, vice-chamber- 
lain to Queen Caroline, and the successor of Sir Isaac Newton in the 
wardenship of the Mint. 



k 



PICTURES. 91 

of boarding-houses in one of our large commercial 
towns, in search of an unfortunate relation, found him- 
self, while expecting the landlady, absorbed in a por- 
trait on the walls of a dingy back-parlor. The furni- 
ture was of the most common description. A few 
smutched and faded annuals, half-covered with dust, 
lay on the centre-table, beside an old-fashioned astral 
lamp, a cracked porcelain vase of wax-flowers, a yellow 
satin pincushion embroidered with tarnished gold-lace, 
and an album of venerable hue filled with hyperbolic 
apostrophies to the charms of some ancient beauty; 
which, with the dilapidated window - curtains, the ob- 
solete sideboard, the wooden effigy of a red-faced man 
with a spyglass under his arm, and the cracked alabas- 
ter clock-case on the mantel, all bespoke an impover- 
ished establishment, so devoid of taste that the beauti- 
ful and artistic portrait seemed to have found its way 
there by a miracle. It represented a young and spirit- 
uelle woman, in the costume, so elegant in material and 
formal in mode, which Copley has immortalized ; in this 
instance, however, there was a French look about the 
coiffure and robe. The eyes were bright with intelli- 
gence chastened by sentiment, the features at once deli- 
cate and spirited, and altogether the picture was one of 
those visions of blended youth, grace, sweetness, and 
intellect, from which the fancy instinctively infers a 
tale of love, genius, or sorrow, according to the mood 
of the spectator. Subdued by his melancholy errand, 
and discouraged by a long and vain search, my friend, 
whose imagination was quite as excitable as his taste 
was correct, soon wove a romance around the picture. 
It was evidently not the work of a novice ; it was as 
much out of place in this obscure and inelegant donii- 



92 PICTURES. 

cile, as a diamond set in filigree, or a rose among pig- 
weed. How came it there ? who was the original ? 
what her history and her fate? Her parentage and 
her nurture must have been refined ; she mnst have 
inspired love in the chivalric ; perchance this was the 
last relic of an illustrious exile, the last memorial of a 
princely house. 

This reverie of conjecture was interrupted by the 
entrance of the landlady. My friend had almost for- 
gotten the object of his visit; and when his anxious 
inquiries proved vain, he drew the loquacious hostess 
into general conversation, in order to elicit the mys- 
tery of the beautiful portrait. She was a robust, gray- 
haired woman, with whose constitutional good-nature 
care had waged a long and partially successful war. 
That indescribable air which speaks of better days was 
visible at a glance ; the remnants of bygone gentility 
were obvious in her dress ; she had the peculiar man- 
ner of one who had enjoyed social consideration ; and 
her language indicated familiarity with cultivated soci- 
ety ; yet the anxious expression habitual to her coun- 
tenance, and the bustling air of her vocation which 
quickly succeeded conversational repose, hinted but too 
plainly straitened circumstances and daily toil. But 
what struck her present curious visitor more than these 
casual traits were the remains of great beauty in the 
still lovely contour of the face, the refined lines of her 
mouth, and the depth and varied play of the eyes. He 
was both sympathetic and ingenious, and ere long gained 
the confidence of his auditor. The unfeigned interest 
and the true perception he manifested in speaking of 
the portrait rendered him, in its owner's estimation, 
worthy to know the story his own intuition had so 



PICTURES. 93 

nearly divined. The original was Theodosia, the 
daughter of Aaron Burr. His affection for her was 
the redeeming fact of his career and character. Both 
were anomalous in our history. In an era remarkable 
for patriotic self-sacrifice, he became infamous for 
treasonable ambition ; among a phalanx of statesmen 
illustrious for directness and integrity, he pursued the 
tortuous path of perfidious intrigue ; in a community 
where the sanctities of domestic life were unusually re- 
vered, he bore the stigma of unscrupulous libertinism. 
With the blood of his gallant adversary and his coun- 
try's idol on his hands, the penalties of debt and treason 
hanging over him, the fertility of an acute intellect 
wasted on vain expedients, — an outlaw, an adventurer, 
a plausible reasoner with one sex and fascinating be- 
trayer of the other, poor, bereaved, contemned, — one 
holy, loyal sentiment lingered in his perverted soul, — 
love for the fair, gifted, gentle being who called him 
father. The only disinterested sympathy his letters 
breathe is for her ; and the feeling and sense of duty 
they manifest offer a remarkable contrast to the paral- 
lel record of a life of unprincipled schemes, misused 
talents, and heartless amours. As if to complete the 
tragic antithesis of destiny, the beloved and gifted 
woman who thus shed an angelic ray upon that dark 
career was, soon after her father's return from Europe, 
lost in a storm at sea, while on her way to visit him, 
thus meeting a fate which, even at this distance of 
time, is remembered with pity. Her wretched father 
bore with him, in all his wanderings and through all his 
remorseful exile, her picture, — emblem of filial love, 
of all that is beautiful in the ministry of woman, and 
all that is terrible in human fate. At length he lay 



94 PICTURES. 

dangerously ill in a garret. He had parted with one 
after another of his articles of raiment, books, and 
trinkets, to defray the expenses of a long illness ; Theo- 
dosia's picture alone remained ; it hung beside him, — 
the one talisman of irreproachable memory, of spotless 
love, and of undying sorrow ; he resolved to die with 
this sweet relic of the loved and lost in his possession ; 
there his sacrifices ended. Life seemed slowly ebbing ; 
the unpaid physician lagged in his visits ; the impor- 
tunate landlord threatened to send this once dreaded 
partisan, favored guest, and successful lover to the 
almshouse ; when, as if the spell of woman's affection 
were spiritually magnetic, one of the deserted old man's 
early victims — no other than she who spoke — acci- 
dentally heard of his extremity, and, forgetting her 
wrongs, urged by compassion and her remembrance of 
the past, sought her betrayer, provided for his wants, 
and rescued him from impending dissolution. In grate- 
ful recognition of her Christian kindness, he gave her 
all he had to bestow, — Theodosia's portrait. 

The indiscriminate disparagement of the old masters 
which has so long been the parodox of Ruskin's beauti- 
ful rhetoric. Hay don's suicidal devotion to the " grand 
style," Mrs. Jameson's gracious exposition of religious 
art, and the extravagant encomiums which the fashion- 
able painter of the hour elicits from accredited critical 
journals, indicate the antagonistic theories and tastes 
that prevail ; and yet these are all authentic and recog- 
nized oracles of artistic knowledge — all more or less 
true ; and yet, in a comparative view, offering such vio- 
lent contrasts as to baffle and discourage a novice in 
search of the legitimate picturesque. 

So thoroughly identified with the possibility and prob- 



PICTURES. 95 

ability of deception is the very name of a Picture- 
dealer, that to the multitude an " Old Master " is a bug- 
bear ; — the tricks of this trade form a staple of Paris 
correspondents and travelled raconteurs. The details 
of manufacture in perhaps this most lucrative branch 
of spurious traffic are patent; and, although the legiti- 
mate products of world-renowned painters are authenti- 
cated and on record, scarcely a month passes without 
some extensive fi aud. The amateur in literature, sculp- 
ture, and music, is comparatively free from this perpetual 
danger ; the sense of mystery does not baffle his enthu- 
siasm ; and while the pictorial votary or victim is dis- 
puting about an "Andrea del vSarto," or a " Teniers," or 
bewildered by the conflicting theories of rival artists in 
regard to color, tone, composition, foreshortening chiaro- 
oscuro, etc., he enjoys, without misgiving, the 7ioi ci da- 
rem of Mozart, revels over the faded leaves of his first 
edition of a classic, or discourses fluently about the 
line of beauty in his copy of a Greek statue. " God Al- 
mighty's daylight," wrote Constable, " is enjoyed by all 
mankind, excepting only the lovers of old dirty canvas, 
perished pictures at a thousand guineas each, cart-grease, 
tar, and snuif of candle." The practical lesson deriva- 
ble from these anomalous results of " Pictures," is that 
we should rely upon our individual impressions, enjoy 
what appeals gratefully to our consciousness, and repu- 
diate hackneyed and conventional terms, judgments, 
and affectations, and boldly declare with the poet, be- 
fore the picture which enchants us — 

I leave to learned fingers and wise hands 
The artist and his ape, to teach and tell 
How well his connoisseurship understands 
The graceful bend and the voluptuous swell: 
Let these describe the undescribable : 



96 PICTURES. 

I would not their vile breath should crisp the stream 
^Vherein that image shall forever dwell; 
The unruffled mirror of the loveliest dream 
That ever left the sky on the deep soul to beam. 

There are heads of men and women delineated hun- 
dreds of years ago, so knit into the mystic web of mem- 
ory and imagination, so familiar through engravings, 
cameos, and other reproductive forms of art, and so 
identified with tragic experience, ideal aspiration or 
heroic deeds, that the first view of the originals is an 
epoch in life ; we seem to behold them down a limitless 
vista of time, and they appeal to our consciousness like 
the faces of the long-loved, long-lost, and suddenly 
restored. It is as if we had entered a spiritual realm, 
and were greeted by the vanished idols of the heart, or 
the " beings of the mind and not of clay," once arbiters 
of destiny and oracles of genius. Beatrice Cenci, 
through soulful eyes infinitely deepened by a life of 
tears dried up by the fever of intense anguish, looks 
the incarnation of beauty and woe, — beauty we have 
adored in dreams, woe we have realized through sym- 
pathy. With the first sight of that alabaster skin, those 
lips quivering with pain, those golden locks, the theme 
of poets, that corpse-like head-band ; the fragility, the 
fervor, the sensibility, and the chaste, ineffable grace ; 
above all, the soulful world of terror, pity, and meek- 
ness in the lustrous and melancholy orbs, how famil- 
iar, yet how new, how pathetic, yet sublime! The 
hoary wretch who called her child, seems lurking some- 
where in that hushed and sombre palace ; the brother 
whose fair brow was lacerated by parental violence ; 
the resigned mother, the infernal banquet, the prison, 
the tribunal, the bloody axe, flit with fearful distinctness 
ber-A'een our entranced vision and the picture; for tra- 



PICTURES. 97 

dition, local association, Shelley's muse, the secret pen 
of the annalist, and the pencil of Guido, combine to 
make absolutely real an unparalleled story of loveliness 
and persecution, maidenhood and martyrdom. It is 
but recently that the true history of this picture has 
been authenticated. According to Guerazzi, who has 
minutely explored contemporary archives, the " study " 
from which it was painted, Ubaldo Ubaldini made from 
memory, to console his sister for the loss of Beatrice. 
He was one of the many artists who loved the beautiful 
victim with the passion of youth, and the fancy of a 
painter ; one of the courageous but inadequate band 
who conspired to rescue her at the scaffold ;=* and it 

* Another current tradition is the following: " So great was the ex- 
citement of the Roi]ian populace against the condemnation of Beatrice, 
that on her way to the scafiold, three attempts were made by concerted 
bands of young men to rescue her from tlie officers' hands. On the eve 
of the fatal day she sat meditating her doom so intently, that for some 
time she did not notice a young man who had bribed the jailer to admit 
him into the cell for the purpose of making a sketch of her. Her ap- 
pearance is thus described: ' Beatrice had risen from her miserable pal- 
let, but, unlike the wretched inmate of a dungeon, resembled a being 
from a brigliter sphere. Her large brown eyes were of liquid softness, 
her forehead broad and clear, her countenance of angelic purity, mys- 
teriously beautiful. Around her head a fold of white muslin had been 
carelessly wrapped, from whence in rich luxuriance fell her fair and 
waving hair. Profound sorrow and recent bodilj^ anguish imparted an 
air of touching sensibility to her lovely features. Suddenly turning, 
she discovered a stranger seated with pencil and paper in hand looking 
earnestly at her — it was Guido Reni. She demanded who he was, 
and what he did there; the frank young artist told his name and object, 
Avhcn, after a moment's hesitation, Beatrice replied, " Signor Guido, 
your great name and my sad story may make my portrait interesting, 
and the picture will awaken compassion if you write on one of its an- 
gles the word innocent.'''' ' Thus was birth given an inspired picture, 
which, to contemplate, is itself worth a visit to Rome; which once seen, 
haunts the memory as a supernatural mystery — as the beautiful appa- 
rition of sublimated suffering." 

r 



93 PICTURES. 

was long believed that he died of indignant grief after 
the catastrophe. Imagine him with the shadow of that 
mighty sorrow upon his soul, his hand inspired by ten- 
der recollection, secluded with her image stamped on 
his broken heart, and patiently reproducing those deli- 
cate features and that anguished expression — his last 
offering to her he so quickly followed into the valley of 
death ! His " study " fell into the hands of Maifei Bar- 
berini, and furnished Guido Reni the materials for this, 
his most effective and endeared creation. Its marvel- 
lous, almost magnetic expression, doubtless gave rise to 
the belief, so long current, that he sketched Beatrice 
on her way to execution ; but the later explanation is 
more accordant with probability and more satisfiictory 
to the mind, for such a work requires for the conditions 
of success, both the inspiration of love and the aptitude 
of skill. Ubaldini furnished one and Guido the other. 
^ Many travellers, especially women, have expressed 
great disappointment with the " Fornarina." They can- 
not associate a figure so much the reverse of ethereal, 
and charms so robust, with the refined taste and delicate 
person of Raffaelo. But such objections are founded 
on an imaginative not philosophic theory of love. There 
never was a genuine artist who, in matters of feeling, 
was not a child of Nature ; and we have but to recog- 
nize the idiosyncrasies of poet and painter to find a 
key to their human affinities. What a peculiar interest 
we feel in the objects of love whose affection cheered, 
and whose sympathy inspired those products of pen and 
pencil, which have become part of our mental being ! 
I have seen a crowd of half-bashful and wholly intent 
English girls watch the carriage which contained the 
obese, yet still fair-haired Countess, whose youthful 



PICTURES. 99 

charms so long made Byron a methodical hermit at 
Ravenna ; and the respectable matron, who as a child 
was deemed by sentimentalists in Germany and her 
own exaggerated fancy, the object of Goethe's senile 
passion, was long courted, on that account, at tea- 
drinkings, by foreign visitors enamored of Faust and 
Wilhelm Meister. Still more natural is the sentiment 
which lures us to earnest acquaintance with the counte- 
nance on which he who gave an angelic semblance to 
maternity and caught the most gracious aspect of child- 
hood, used to gaze with rapture ; the eye that re- 
sponded to his glance, the smile that penetrated his 
heart, and were fixed on his canvas. The impression 
which the " Fornarina " of the Tribune instantly gives, 
is that of genuine womanhood : there is generosity, a 
repose, a world of latent emotion, an exuberance of 
sympathetic power, in the full impassioned eye, the 
broad symmetrical bosom, the rich olive tint ; it is pre- 
cisely the woman to harmonize by her simple presence, 
and to soothe or exalt by her spontaneous love, the 
mood of a man of nervous organization and ardent 
temper. There is a tranquil self-possession in the face 
and figure which the sensitive and excitable artist es- 
pecially finds refreshing, — a candid nature such as 
alone can inspire such a man's confidence, a majestic 
simplicity, peculiar to the best type of Roman women, 
more delightful to the over-tasked brain and sensibili- 
ties than the highest culture of an artificial kind ; and 
there is the fresh, unperverted, richly developed, har- 
moniously united heart and physique, which, notwith- 
standing the modern standard of female charms, is the 
normal and the essential basis of honest, natural aflin- 
ity. I could never turn, in the Florence Gallery, from 



100 PICTURES. 

the pale, delicately rounded, ideal brow, the almost 
pleading eye, and the cherubic lips of Raffaello, in- 
stinct with the needs as well as the immortal lon<xinps 
of genius, to the mellow, calm, self-sustained and health- 
ful " Fomarina," without fancying the support, the rest, 
the inexhaustible comfort — in Othello's sense of that 
expressive word — which the sensitive artist could find 
in the cheerful baker's daughter, the irritable seeker in 
the serene and satisfied woman, the delicate in the 
strong, the gentle in the hearty, the ideal in the real, 
the poetic in the practical, the spiritual in the human ; 
and I contemplated her noble contour, her contented 
smile, her beaming cheek, and eye undeepened by the 
experience that withers as it teaches, — yet soulful with 
latent emotion, with an ever-increasing sense of her 
native claims to Raphael's love. 

Musical organizations are especially sensitive to the 
pictorial spell ; the letters of Mendelssohn indicate hov/ 
it influenced his development. Writing from Venice 
of church services he attended, he says : — " Nothing 
impressed me with more solemn awe than, when on the 
very spot for which they were originally created, the 
" Presentation of Mary as a child in the Temple," " the 
Assumption of the Virgin," " The Entombment of 
Christ," and " The Martyrdom of St. Peter," in all their 
grandeur, gradually steal forth out of the darkness in 
which the long lapse of time has veiled them. Often I 
feel a musical inspiration, and since I came here have 
been busily engaged in composition." And from Flor- 
ence he writes : — "There is a small picture here which 
I discovered for myself. It is by Fra Bartolomeo, who 
must have been a man of most devout, tender, and ear- 
nest spirit. The figures are finished in the most ex- 



PICTURES. 101 

quisite and consummate manner. You can see in the 
picture itself tbat the pious master has taken delight in 
painting it and in finishing the most minute details, 
probably with a view of giving it away to gratify some 
friend ; we feel as if the painter belonged to it, and still 
ought to be sitting before his work or had this moment 
left." This personal magnetism about pictures is an 
authentic evidence of their vital relation to character, 
and it is felt often in an incredible way by the imagina- 
tive and susceptible. The same gifted and generous 
composer who thus wrote of Titian and Fra Bartolomeo, 
speaks of the impression he received from Raphael's 
portrait by himself: "Youthful, pale, delicate, and with 
such inward aspirations, such longing and wistfuhiess in 
the mouth and eyes, that it is as if you could see into 
his very soul ; that he cannot succeed in expressing all 
that he sees and feels, and is thus impelled to go forward, 
and that he must die an early death ; — all this is writ- 
ten on his mournful, suffering, yet fervid countenance." 
Vandyke's portraits of Charles the First, impress the 
spectator with regal fanaticism, and a tragic destiny 
more than some of the written histories of his reign. 
The exquisite hands of Leonardo's " Gioconde," are as 
eloquent of feminine grace and sensibility as the most 
elaborate description. Correggio's " Magdalen " in the 
remorseful ahcmdon and beautiful sadness of its expres- 
sion, reveals her who " loved much," repented, and was 
forgiven. Giovanni di Medici, in the Uffizzi Gallery, 
fulfils to the imagination the ideal of mediaeval Italian 
soldiership. Stuart's " Washington " embodies the se- 
rene conscience, the self-control, the humane dignity and 
birthright of command which consecrate our peerless 
chief; and Delaroche's "Napoleon Crossing the Alps," 



102 PICTURES. 

perpetuates the intense purpose and insatiable ambition 
that won so many battles and died of anxiety on an 
ocean-rock. Such instances, which might easily be 
multiplied, prove how a single department of Art, and 
that the least estimated, is allied to history, patriotism, 
and sentiment, and capable of touching their secret 
springs and unveiling their limitless perspective at a 
glance. Guercino's '' Hagar " is a biblical poem. Ham- 
let's filial reproaches borrow their keenest sting from 
two " counterfeit presentments," and Trumbull's faithful 
and assiduous pencil has transmitted the individualities 
of our Revolutionary drama. And thus the art of por- 
traiture, even in its general relations, may become, 
through illustrious subjects and rare fidelity, the ro- 
mance which association of ideas breeds from reality. 

I was never more impressed with the absolute line 
of demarcation between the imitative and the inventive, 
even in the lighter processes of Art, than when exam- 
ining the graphic series of illustrations of " The Wan- 
dering Jew." Nature is represented under all forms, — 
the woods, the desert, the ocean, caves, meadows, and 
skies, and these fixed elemental features might be well 
reflected by mechanical aids — photograj^hed or repro- 
duced through chemical and optical means; but the 
true meaning of each picture consisted in the ever- 
present shadow pursuing the Wanderer — the form of 
the Holy One bowed under his cross : it glimmered in 
the water, was stamped on the rock, outlined in the 
gnarled forest branches, pencilled in the floating vapor, 
reflected in the ice-mirrored lake, with a latent and 
inevitable yet unobtrusive and apparently accidental 
omnipresence, as if wrought into the texture of Nature 
throuirh the creative ano-uish of conscience — which 



PICTURES. 103 

emphatically announced an intelligence far beyond all 
mechanical art, and interfused the material with the 
abstract, the imaginative, and the human as only genius 
can. The same thing is evinced by comparing the best 
photographs of architecture, figures, or landscape with 
the sketch-book of a genuine artist ; in certain points, 
there will be found a special intelligence and feeling 
which transcends the most remarkable imitative truth. 
How nmch of this is suggested, for instance, by the mere 
cataloo-ue of an album on the table at a Parisian soiree : 

is 

fleurs de Redonte, chevaux de Carl Vernet, Bedouins 
d'Horace, aquarelles de Ciceri, petit paysages de Ge- 
niole, caricatures de Grandville et de Monnier, beaux 
brigands de Schnetz — " tous chefs d'oeuvre au petit 
pied." 

A portrait of little Fritz, drumming, in the Berlin 
Gallery, Carlyle hails in his " Life of Frederick the 
Great " as " one tiny islet of reality amid the shoreless 
sea of fantasms ; Flaying of Bartholomews, Rape of Eu- 
ropas, etc." Napoleon was delighted to remember that 
his mother reclined on tapestry representing the heroes 
of the Iliad, when she brought him into the world. 

For how long and with what vividness are certain 
pictures associated with localities. Gainsborough's 
'• Blue Boy," and Reynolds's " Strawberry Girl," are 
among the salient retrospective images of the English 
school at the Manchester Exhibition. We think of 
Correggio with Parma, Perugino with Perugia, Fra 
Angelico with Florence, Da Vinci's Last Supper and 
Guercino's Hagar with Milan, Murillo with Seville, 
Vandyke with Madrid, Rubens with Antwerp, Watteau 
with Paris, and Paul Potter's Bull with the Hague. 

The Dutch School, in a philosophical estimate, is but 



104 PICTURES. 

the compensation afforded by the romance of Art for 
its deficiency in Nature ; the element of the jDicturesque 
not found in mountains, forests, and cataracts, the low- 
land painters wrought from flowers and firesides ; the 
radiant tulips and exquisite interiors, the humble but 
characteristic in life and manners. To seize upon indi- 
viduality is the conservative tact of both painter and 
poet ; whoever does this effectively contributes to the 
world's gallery of historical portraits, and keeps before 
the living, the faces, costume, and action of bygone races 
and heroes. Catlin's aboriginal portraits introduced the 
American native tribes to Europe ; a naturalist abroad 
has but to turn over Audubon's portfolio to become in- 
timately acquainted with every bird whose plumage or 
song makes beautiful our woodlands and sea-shore ; the 
traveller who rests an hour at Perugia, may trace on 
the walls of a church the original, crude, yet pious ex- 
pression which Raphael developed into angelic beauty. 
Vernet has, by the very multiplicity of his battle-pieces, 
signalized on canvas the military genius of the French 
nation ; the fiiith which so distinguishes the fifteenth 
from the speculation of the eighteenth century, is man- 
ifest to us most eloquently in the master-pieces of relig- 
ious art, which yet remain in peerless beauty to attest 
the holy convictions that inspired them ; and all that is 
peculiar in Grecian culture has found no exponent like 
the statues of her divinities. Hogarth preceded Crabbe 
and Dickens in making palpable the shadows of want, 
crime, and luxury-. The Italian satirist who endowed 
animals with speech and made them represent the 
absurdities of humanity, hinted their possible signifi- 
cance less than Landseer who, by individualizing their 
most salient traits, or Kaulbach who revealed the brute 



PICTURES. 



105 



creation in the highest intuitive expression. There 
is a piquant rustic beauty by Greuze, which embodies 
and embalms, in its exquisite suggestiveness, the special 
claim of naive brightness and grace that belongs almost 
exclusively to French lovable women ; and there is a 
portrait of an American matronly belle of the days 
of Washington, by Stuart, which represents the type 
of mingled self-reliance and womanly loveliness that 
has made the ladies of our Republican court so mem- 
orably attractive. 





DOCTORS. 



Throw physic to the dogs. 

Macekth. 

Friend of my life, which did not you prolong, 
The world had wanted many an idle song. 

POPK. 




N the moving panoramas of cities are to be 
seen certain vehicles of all degrees of locomo- 
tive beauty and convenience, from the glossy 
and silver-knobbed carriage with its prancing grays, to 
the bacheloric-looking sulky with its one gaunt horse, 
in which are seated gentlemen of a learned and profes- 
sional aspect, usually wearing spectacles, and always an 
air of intense respectability, or of contemplation and 
seriousness. They recognize numerous acquaintances 
as they pass with a pecuHar smile and jiod, and are 
usually accompanied by " a little man-boy to hold the 
horse," as the French cook in the play defines a tigre. 
These mysterious personages rejoice in the title of Doc- 
tor, — once a very distinctive appellation, but now as 
common as authorship and travelling. A moralist, 
watching them gliding by amid fashionable equipages, 
crowded omnibuses, hasty pedestrians, and all the phe- 
nomena of life in a metropolis, would find a striking 
contrast between the rushing tide around, and the 
hushed rooms they enter. To how many their visit is 
the one daily event that breaks in upon the monotony 



DOCTORS. 107 

of illness and confinement ; how many eyes watch them 
with eager suspense, and listen to their opinion as the 
fiat of destiny ; how many feverishly expect their com- 
ing, shrink from their polished steel, rejoice in their 
cheering ministrations, or dread their long bills ! '' The 
Doctor ! " — a word that stirs the extremest moods — 
despair and jollity ! 

There is no profession which depends so much for its 
efficiency on personal traits as that of medicine ; for 
the utility of technical knowledge here is derived from 
individual judgment, tact, and sympathy. In other 
words, the physician has to deal with an unknown ele- 
ment. Between the specific ailment and the remedy 
there are peculiarities of constitution, the influence of 
circumstances, and the laws of Nature to be considered ; 
so that although the medical adviser may be thoroughly 
versed in physiology, the materia medica, and the symp- 
toms of disease, if he possess not the discrimination, the 
observant skill, and the reflective power to apply his 
learning wisely, it is comparatively unavailing. The 
aim of the divine and the attorney, however impeded 
by obstacles, is reached by a more direct course ; logic, 
eloquence, and zeal, united to professional attainment, 
will insure success in law and divinity ; but in physic, 
certain other qualities in the man are requisite to give 
scope to the professor. Hence we associate a certain 
originality with the idea of a doctor ; are apt to regard 
the vocation at the two extremes of superiority and pre- 
tension, and justly estimate the individuals of the class 
according to their capacity of insight and their princi- 
ples of action, rather than by their mere acquisitions or 
rank as teachers. The uncertainty of medicine, as a 
practical art, thus induces a stronger reliance on indi- 



108 DOCTORS. 

vidiial endowments than is the case in any other liberal 
pursuit. 

A philosophical history of the art of healing would 
be not less curious than suo^srestive. The absurd theo- 
ries which checked its progress for centuries, the secrets 
hoarded by Egyptian priests, the union of medical 
knowledge with ancient systems of philosophy, the 
epoch of Galen, the Arabian and Salerno schools, the 
reformation of Paracelsus, the brilliant discoveries 
which, at long intervals, illumined the track of the sci- 
ence, and the enlightened principles now realized, — if 
fully discussed, would form an extraordinary chapter in 
the biography of man. Herein, as with other vocations, 
modern division of labor has concentrated professional 
aptitudes. " L' affluence des postulants," says Balzac, 
" a force la medecine a se diviser en categories ; il y a 
le medecin qui professe, le medecin politique et le med- 
ecin militant et la cinquieme divisions, celle des doc- 
teurs qui vendent des remedes." 

St. Luke and the Good Samaritan are yet the favorite 
signs of apothecaries, confirming the original charity of 
the art ; and in the south of Europe may still be seen 
over the barbers' shops, the effigy of a human arm 
spoutiiig blood from an open vein, an indication of the 
once universal custom of periodical depletion. It is 
now acknowledged that diverse climates require modi- 
fied treatment of the same disease ; that nervous sus- 
ceptibility is far greater in one latitude than another, 
and that habits of life essentially individualize the con- 
stitution. Indeed, the widest difference exists in the 
relation of persons to the doctor ; some never see him, 
and others must have a consultation upon the most tri- 
fling ailment, — so great is the dependence which can 



DOCTORS. 109 

be had upon nature, and so extreme both the faith and 
the scepticism which exists in regard to curative science. 
Popular literature is full of hits at the profession : 
« La barber fait plus de la moitie d'un medecin," says 
Moliere, who, in '' La Malade Lnaginaire," has so acutely 
given the current philosophy of the subject, by satiriz- 
ing the pedantry and charlatanism of the doctors of his 
day : " Nous voyons que, dans la maladie tout le monde 
a recours aux medecins ; — ce'st une marque de la fai- 
blesse humaine et non pas de la verite de leur art ; " and 
of all ailments the hardest to cure is " la maladie des 
medecins." Imagination has been called by a German 
philosopher " the mediatrix, the nurse, the mover of all 
the several parts of our spiritual organism." " I have 
the worst luck of any physician under the cope of 
heaven," complains Sancho Panza ; "other doctors kill 
their patients and are paid for it too, and yet they are 
at no further trouble than scrawling two or three cramp 
words for some physical slip-slop, which the apothe- 
caries are at all the pains to make up." 

It would seem, indeed, as if the advance of science 
improved medical practice negatively, that is, bv induc- 
ing what in politics has been called a masterly^inactiv- 
ity ; and there is no doubt that no small degree of the 
success attending Hahnemann's theory is to be attributed 
to the comparative abstinence it inculcates in the use 
of remedial agents. The fact is a significant one, as 
indicative of the want of positive science in the healing 
art ; and the consequent wisdom of leaving to natur^ 
as far as possible, the restorative process. Indeed, to 
assist nature is acknowledged, by just observers, to 'be 
the only wise course ; and this brings us to the infer- 
ence that a good physician is necessarily a philosoj>lier; 



110 DOCTORS. 

it is incumbent on him, of all men, to exercise the 
inductive faculty ; he must possess good causality, not 
only to reason justly on individual cases, but to apply 
the progress of science to the exigencies of disease. 
It is related of Bixio that such was his zeal for science, 
having long wished to ascertain whether a man instinc- 
tively turns when wounded in a vital part, asked his ad- 
versary in a duel to aim at one, and, although fatally 
hurt, exclaimed with ardor, as he involuntarily spun 
round — " It is true, they do turn ! " 

The comparatively slow accumulation of scientific 
truth in regard to the treatment of disease, is illustrated 
by the f-ict that not until the lapse of two thousand 
years after medicine had assumed the rank of a science, 
under the auspices of Hippocrates, was the circulation 
of the blood discovered, — an era in its history. The 
fiery discussion of the efficacy of inoculation and its 
gradual introduction, is another significant evidence of 
the same general truth. But, in our own day, the rapid 
and valuable developments of chemistry have, in a 
measure, reversed the picture.^v Numerous alleviating 
and curative agents have been discovered ; the gas of 
poisonous acids is found to eradicate, in many cases, 
the most fatal diseases of the eye ; heat, more penetrat- 
ing than can be created by other means, is eliminated 
from carbon in an aeriform state, passes through the 
cuticle, without leaving a mark on its surface, and re- 
stores aching nerves or exhausted vitality. Vegetable 
and mineral substances are refined, analyzed, and com- 
bined with a skill never before imagined ; opium yields 
morphine, and Peruvian bark quinine, and all the known 
salubrious elements are thus rendered infinitely subser- 
vient to the healing art. Chloroform is one of the most 



DOCTORS. Ill 

beneficent of these new agents ; and has exorcised the 
demon of physical pain by a magical charm, without 
violating, in judicious hands, the integrity of Nature. 

There is a secret of curative art in which consists the 
genius of healing ; it is that union of sympathy with 
intelligence, and of moral energy with magnetic gifts, 
whereby the tides of life are swayed, and one " can min- 
ister to a mind diseased." Fortunate is the patient 
who is attended by one thus endowed — but such are 
usually found out of the professional circle — they are 
referees ordained by Nature to settle the difficulties of 
inferior spirits ; the arbiters recognized by instinct who 
soothe anger, reconcile doubt, amuse, elevate, and con- 
sole by a kind of moral alchemy ; and potent coadjutors 
are they to the material aids of merely technical physi- 
cians. " Who dare say," asks Renan, in allusion to the 
calming and purifying influence of Jesus, " that in many 
cases, and apart from injuries of a dreaded character, 
the contact of an exquisite person is not worth all the 
resources of pharmacy ? " " It was agony to me," 
wrote Hahnemann, " to walk in darkness, with no other 
light than could be derived from books." One of his 
opponents from this confession infers the fallacy of his 
system ; " the conviction," he observes, " is irresistibly 
forced upon us that he was not a horn physician^ If 
our ancestors were less enlightened in regard to hy- 
giene, and if their physicians were less scrupulous in 
tampering with the functions of nature, they had one 
signal advantage over us in escaping the inhuman com- 
ments, made after every fatal issue, on the practice and 
the treatment adopted — no matter \ni\\ how much con- 
scientious intelligence ; we not only suffer the pangs of 
bereavement, but the reproaches of devotees of each 



112 DOCTORS. 

school of medicine, and of rival doctors — of having by 
an unwise choice sacrificed the life for which we would 
have cheerfully resigned our own ! Somewhat of this 
occult healing force might have been read in the serene 
countenance of Dr. Physic of Philadelphia; it predom- 
inated in the benevolent founder of the Insane Asylum 
of Palermo, who learned from an attack of men,tal 
disorder how to feel for, and minister to, those thus 
afflicted. The late Preissnitz, of Graefenberg, seems to 
have enjoyed the gift which is as truly Nature's indica- 
tion of an aptitude for the art, as a sense of beauty in 
the poet. But this principle is " caviare to the gen- 
eral." 

Medicine has lost much of its inherent dignity by the 
same element, in modern times, that has degraded art, 
letters, and society, — the spirit of trade. This agency 
encourages motives, justifies means, and leads to ends 
wholly at variance with high tone and with truth. The 
gentleman, the philosopher, the man of honor, and with 
them that keystone in the arch of character — self-re- 
spect, are wholly compromised in the process of sinking 
a liberal art into a common trade. In the economy of 
modern society, however, the physician has acquired a 
new influence ; he has gained upon the monopoly of the 
priest, for while the spirit of inquiry, by trenching on 
the mysterious prerogatives w^hich superstition once ac- 
corded, has retrenched the latter's functions, the same 
agency, by extending the domain of science and ren- 
dering its claims popular, has enlarged the sphere of 
the other profession. To an extent, therefore, never 
before known, the doctor fills the office of confessor ; 
his visits yield agreeable excitement to women with 
who .Ti he gossips and sympathizes ; admitted by the 



DOCTORS. 113 

very exigency of the case to entire confidence, often 
revered as a counsellor and friend, as well as relied on 
as a healer, not infrequently he becomes the oracle of a 
household. Privileges like these, when used with be- 
nevolence and integrity, are doubtless honorable to both 
parties, and become occasions for the exercise of the 
noblest service and the highest sentiments of our na- 
ture ; while, on the other hand, they are liable to the 
grossest abuse, where elevation of character and gentle- 
manly instincts are wanting. Accordingly there has 
sprung into existence, in our day, a personage best des- 
ignated as the medical Jesuit ; whose real vocation, as 
well as the process by which he acquires supremacy, 
fully justifies the appellation. Like his religious proto- 
type, he operates through the female branches, who, in 
their turn, control the heads of families ; and the extent 
to which the domestic arrangements, the social rela- 
tions, and even the opinions of individuals are thus reg- 
ulated, is truly surprising. " Women," says Mrs. Jame- 
son, " are inclined to fall in love with priests and physi- 
cians, because of the help and comfort they derive from 
both in perilous moral and physical maladies. They 
believe in the presence of real pity, real sympathy, 
where the look and tone of each have become merely 
habitual and conventional, I may say professional." Yet 
a popular novelist, in his ideal portrait of the physician, 
justly claims superiority to impulse and casual sympa- 
thy, as an essential requisite to success. " He must en- 
ter the room a calm intelligencer. He is disabled for 
his mission if he suffer aught to obscure the keen 
glance of his science." * 

The natural history of the doctor has not yet been 
* Bulwer's Strange St07'y, 



114 DOCTORS, 

written, but the classes are easily nomenclated ; we have 
all known the humorous, the urbane, the oracular, the 
facetious, the brusque, the elegant, the shrewd, the ex- 
quisite, the burly, the bold, and the fastidious ; and the 
character of people may be inferred by their choice of 
each species. Those in whom taste predominates over 
intellect, will select a physician for his agreeable per- 
sonal qualities ; while such as value essential traits, will 
conqjromise with the roughest exterior and the least 
flattering address for the sake of genuine skill and a 
vigorous and honest mind. As a general rule, in large 
cities, vanity seems to rule the selection ; and it is a 
lamentable view of human nature to see the blind prefer- 
ence given to plausible but shallow men, whose smooth 
tongues or gallant air win them suffrages denied to good 
sense and candid intercourse. The most detestable 
genus is that we have described under the name of medi- 
cal Jesuits ; next in annoyance are the precisians ; the 
most harmless of the weaker order are the gossips ; 
and there is often little to choose in point of risk to " the 
house of hfe " between the very timid and the dare- 
devils ; in a great exigency the former, and in an ordi- 
nary case the latter are equally to be shunned. In the 
" Horse Subsecivae " of Dr. John Brown, we find some apt 
and needed counsel to the aspirants for medical success : 
— " The young doctor must have for his main faculty, 
sense ; but all will not do if Genius is not there ; such 
a special therapeutic gift had Hippocrates, Sydenham, 
Pott, Purcell, John Hunter, Delpech, Dupuytren, Kellie, 
Cheyne, Baillie, and Abercrombie. Moreover, let me 
tell you, my young doctor friends, that a cheerful face 
and step and neckcloth and button-hole, and an occa- 
sional hearty and kindly joke, and the power of execut- 



DOCTORS. 115 

ing and setting a-going a good laugh, are stock in our 
trade not to be despised." Brillat Savarin declares, 
doctors easily become gourmands because so well 
received. 

In Paris, Edinburgh, and Philadelphia all the world 
over, the medical student is an exceptional character ; 
their pranks are patent ; the rough ones like to kick 
up rows, and the more quiet are unique at practi- 
cal jokes. Bob Sawyer is a typical hero. If, like the 
portrait-painter, doctors are often the playthings of 
fortune in cities, where the arbitrary whims of fashion 
decree success ; in the country, their true worth is 
more apt to find appreciation ; and the individualities 
of character, having free scope, quite original children 
of Apollo are the result. The name of Hopkins is 
still memorable in the region where he practised, as 
one of the literary clique of which Humphries, Dwight, 
and Barlow were members. Dr. Osborn, of Sandwich, 
Mass., wrote the popular whaling-song yet in vogue 
among Nantucketers. Dr. Holyoke of Salem, is re- 
nowned as a beautiful instance of longevity ; and the 
wit of Dr. Spring was proverbial in Boston. The best 
example of a medical philosopher, in our annals, is 
that of Dr. Rush of Philadelphia ; he reformed the 
system of practice ; first treated yellow fever success- 
fully, made climate a special study, and, like Burke, 
laid every one he encountered under contribution for 
facts. His life of seventy years was passed in ardent 
investigation. It is remarkable that the first martyr to 
American liberty was a physician ; and before he fell, 
Warren eloquently avowed his principles, like Korner 
in Germany, rousing the spirit of his countrymen, and 
then consecrating his sentiments with his blood. Boyls- 



116 DOCTORS. 

ton, the ancestral portraits of whose family are among 
the best of Copley's American works, nearly fell a vic- 
tim to public indignation for his zealous and intelli- 
gent advocacy of inoculation, and natural science owes 
a debt to Barton, Morton, and De Kay, which is ac- 
knowledged both at home and abroad. A French doc- 
tor has noted the historical importance of his confreres^ 
and tells us Hamond was Racine's master, Lestocq 
helped elevate Catharine to the Russian throne, Ilaller 
was a poet and romancer, Cuvier was the greatest nat- 
uralist of his age, and Murat was a doctor. French 
medecins have figured in the Chamber and on the 
Boulevards. 

If, by virtue of the philosophic instinct and liberal 
tastes, the doctor is thus allied to belles-lettres, he is 
allured into the domain of science by a still more direct 
sympathy. To how many has the study of the materia 
medica and the culling of simples, proved the occasion 
of botanical research ; and hence, by an easy transition, 
of exploring the entire field of natural science. Thus 
Davy was beguiled into chemical investigation ; and 
Abercrombie, by the vestibule of physiological knowl- 
edge, sought the clue to mental philosophy ; while 
Spurzheim and Combe ministered to a great charity by 
clearly explaining to the masses the natural laws of 
human well-being. It is an evidence of the sagacity of 
the Russian Peter, that he sought an interview with 
Boerhaave ; for by these varied links of general utility, 
the medical office enters into every branch of social 
economy ; and is only narrowed and shorn of dignity 
by the limited views or inadequate endowments of its 
votaries. The Jewish physician preserved and transmit- 
ted much of the learning of the world after the fall of 



DOCTORS. 117 

the Alexandrian school.* Life-insurance and quaran- 
tines, have become such grave interests, that through 
them the responsibility of the physician to society is 
manifest to all ; that to individuals is only partially rec- 
ognized. How Cowper and Byron suffered for wise 
medical advice, and what ameliorations in states of mind 
and moral conditions, have been induced by the now 
"widely-extended knowledge of hygienic laws ! Charles 
Lamb reasons wisely as well as quaintly in this wise : — 
" You are too apprehensive of your complaint. The 
best way in these cases is to keep yourself as ignorant 
as the world was before Galen, of the entire construc- 
tion of the animal man ; not to be conscious of a mid- 
riff; to hold kidneys to be an agreeable fiction; to 
account the circulation of the blood an idle whim of Har- 
vey's ; to acknowledge no mechanism not visible. For 
once, fix the seat of your disorder, and your fancies flux 
into it like bad humors. Above all, take exercise, and 
avoid tampering with the hard terms of Art. Desks are 
not deadly. It is the mind, and not the limbs, that 
taints by long sitting. Think of the patience of the 
tailors ; think how long the Lord Chancellor sits ; think 
of the brooding hen." 

In literature the doctor figures with a genial dignity ; 

* " Mohammedanism had been the patron of physical science ; pagan- 
izing Christianity not only repudiated it, but exhibited towards it sen- 
timents of contemptuous disdain and hatred; hence physicians were 
viewed by the Church with dislike and regarded as atheists by the peo- 
ple, \\\\o had been taught that cures must be wrought by relics of mar- 
tyrs and bones of saints: for each disease there was a saint. Already 
it was apparent that the Saracenic movement would aid in developing 
the intelligence of barbarian Western Europe, through Hebrew physi- 
cians, in spite of the opposition encountered ft'om theological ideas im- 
ported from Constantinople and Rome." — Draper's Inttlltclual Devel- 
opment of J£uroj)e, p. 414. 



118 DOCTORS. 

he has affinities with genius and a life-estate in the 
kingdom of letters : witness Garth's poem of " The 
Dispensary ; " Akenside's " Pleasures of the Imagina- 
tion ; " Armstrong's " Art of Health ; " Cowley's verses, 
Sprat's Life of him, and Currie's of Burns ; Beattie's 
" JVIinstrel ; " Darwin's " Botanic Garden ; " Moore's 
" Travels in Italy ; " Zimmerman's " Solitude ; " Gold- 
smith's " Vicar and Village ; " Aikin's " Criticisms ; " 
Joanna Baillie's gifted brother, and Lady Morgan's 
learned husband. Burke found health at the house of 
the benicrn Dr. Nuoent of Bath, at the outset of his 
career, and married the daughter of his medical friend. 
" Les medecins sont souvent tout a la fois conseillors, 
arbitres et magistrats au sein des families." The best 
occasional verses of Dr. Johnson are those that com- 
mend the humble virtues of Levett, the apothecary.* 
Dr. Lettson wrote the life of Carver, the American trav- 
eller, and his account of that adventurous unfortunate 
led to the establishment of the Literary Fund Society. 
Among the graves near Archibald Carlyle's old church 
at Inveresk, where that handsome clerical and convivial 
gossip is buried, is that of the sweet versifier, beloved 
as the " Delta " of Blackwood, Dr. Moir, who so genially 

* When fainting Nature called for aid, 

And hovering Death prepared the blow, 
His vigorous remedy displayed 

The power of Art without the show,- 
In INIisery's darkest caverns known, 

His useful help was ever nigh, 
"Where hopeless Anguish poured his groan, 

Or lonely Want retired to die. 
No summons mocked by chill delay, 

No petty gains disdained by pride, 
The modest wants of every day, 

The toil of every day supplied. 



DOCTORS. 119 

united the domestic lyrist and the good doctor, a Delta 
framed in bay adorns the pedestal of his monument. 
Rousseau, an invalid of morbid sensibility, recognizes 
the professional superiority of the physician as a social 
agent : " Par tons le pays ce sont les hommes les plus 
veritablement utiles et savants." The " Medecin de 
Campagne " of Balzac, and the " Dr. Antonio " of Ruf- 
fini, are elaborate and charming illustrations of this testi- 
mony of the author of *' Emile." What a curious chapter 
would be added to the " Diary of a Physician," had 
Cabanis kept a record of his interviews with those two 
illustrious patients — Mirabeau and Condorcet. The 
social affinities of the doctor prove indirectly what we 
before suggested, that it is in the character more than 
in the learning, in the mind rather than the technical 
knowledge, that medical success lies. One of the shrewd- 
est of the profession, Abernethy, declared thereof — 
" I have observed, in my profession, that the greatest 
men were not mere readers, but the men who reflected, 
who observed, who fairly thought out an idea." Al- 
most intuitive is the venerable traditional ideal of the 
physician ; among the aborigines of this continent, the 
**• medicine man " was revered as nearest to the " Great 
Spirit." " I hold physicians," said Dr. Parr, " to be 
the most enlightened professional persons in the whole 
circle of human arts and sciences." In our own day. 
Lever's Irish novels, and in our own country the writ- 
ings of Drake, Mitchell, Holmes, Bigelow, Francis, and 
others, indicate the literary claims of the profession. 
Think of Arbuthnot beside Pope's sick-bed, and the 
latter's apostrophe — 

" Friend of my lifb, which did not you prolong, 
The world had wanted many an idle song ; ' ' 



120 DOCTORS. 

of Garth ministering to Johnson, and Rush philosophiz- 
ing with Dr. Franklin, and the friendship of Pope and 
Cheselden. Bell's comments on Art, Colden's " Letters 
to Linnaeus," and Thatcher's " Military Journal,*' are at- 
tractive proofs of that liberal tendency which leads the 
physician beyond the limits of his profession into the 
field of philosophical research. The bequest of Sir 
Hans Sloane was the nucleus of the British Museum. 
We all have a kind of affection for Dr. Slop, who, 
drawn from Dr. Burton of York, — a cruel, instrumental 
obstretician, — is the type of an almost obsolete class, 
as the doctor in " Macbeth " is of the sapient pretender 
of all time. As to ideal doctors, how real to our minds 
is that Wordsworthean myth. Dr. Fell, the physician of 
Sancho Panza, and the Purgon of IMoliere, while Dul- 
camara is a permanent type of the clever quack. Dr. 
Bartolo of the solemn professor, and Sangra 'o of the 
merciless phlebotomist. To think it " more honorable 
to fail according to rule than to succeed by innovation," 
is a satire of no local significance, but the constant 
creed of the medical pedant. Satirized years ago by the 
French comic dramatist, the profession was caricatured 
the other day by a young disciple of Esculapius, who in 
a clever drawing represented the votary of homoeopathy 
with a little globule between thumb and finger, engaged 
in a kind of airy swallowing ; the allopathic patient in 
an easy- chair is making wry faces over a large spoonful 
of physic ; the believer in hydropathy sits forlorn and 
shivering in a sitz-bath, with a large goblet of water 
raised to his lips ; while the Thomsonian victim is 
writhing and nauseating in anguish ; and in the midst 
a skeleton, with a syringe for a baton, is dancing in a 
transport of infernal joy. Southey took a wise advan- 



DOCTORS. 121 

tage of the popular idea of a doctor, in the genial 
and specuhitive phase of the character, when he gave 
the title to his last rambling, erudite, quaint, and charm- 
ing production. JNIen of letters accordingly are wont 
to fraternize with the best of the profession ; and there 
has always been a reciprocal interchange between them 
both of affection and wit. Thus Halleck tells us in 
« Fanny " — 

In Physic, we have Francis and M'Neven, 

Famed for lon^ heads, short lectures, and long bills; 

And Quackeiiboss and others, who from heaven 
Were rained upon us in a shoAver of pills: 

They 'd beat the deathless Esculapius hollow, 

And make a starveling druggist of Apollo. 

The record of our surgeons in the war for the Union 
is alike honorable to their patriotism, humanity, and 
skill. 

Popular writers have indicated the claims and char- 
acter of the profession, not only in a dramatic or anec- 
dotal way, but by personal testimony and observation ; 
and those who have had the best opportunities and are 
endowed with liberal sympathies, warmly recognize the 
possible usefulness and probable benevolence of a class 
of men more often satirized than sung. The privations 
and toil incident to country practice half a ceniury ago, 
are scarcely imagined now. Sir Walter Scott tells us : 
"I have heard the celebrated traveller Mimgo Park, 
who had experienced both courses of life, rathei- give 
the preference to travelling as a discoverer in Africa, 
than to wandering by night and day the wilds of his na- 
tive land in the capacity of a country practitioner." Dr. 
Johnson, a livelong invalid, and not apt to overlook 
professional foibles, gives a high average character to 
the doctor. " Whether," he observes, " what Sir William 



122 DOCTORS. 

Temple says be true, that the physicians have more 
learning than the other faculties, I will not stay to in- 
quire ; but I believe every man has found in physicians 
great liberality and dignity of sentiment, very prompt 
effusion of beneficence and willingness to exert a lucra- 
tive art where there is no hope of lucre." 

It is a nervous process to undergo the examination of 
a Parisian medical professor of the first class. Auscul- 
tation was first introduced by one of them ; Laennec, 
and diagnosis is their chief art. In their hands the 
stethoscope is a divining rod. So reliable is their in- 
sight, that they seem to read the internal organism as 
through a glass ; and one feels under Louis's inspection 
as if awaiting sentence. The laws of disease have been 
thoroughly studied in the hospitals of Paris, and the 
philosophy of symptoms is there understood by the med- 
ical savans with the certainty of a natural science, but 
the knowledge and application of remedies is by no 
means advanced in equal proportion. Accordingly, the 
perfection of modern skill in the art seems to result 
from an education in the French schools, combined with 
experience in English practice ; thorough acquaintance 
with physiology, and habits of acute observation and 
accurate deduction, are thus united to executive tact 
and ability. And similar eclectic traits of character are 
desirable in the physician, especially the union of solid- 
ity of mind with agreeableness of manner ; for in no 
vocation is there so often demanded the blending of the 
fortiter in re with the suaviter in modo. 

The absence of faith in positive remedies that ob- 
tains in Europe, is very striking to an American visitor,, 
because it offers so absolute a contrast to the system 
pursued at home. I attended the funeral of a country- 



DOCTORS. 123 

man, a few days after reaching Paris, and, on our way 
to Pere la Chaise, his case and treatment were fully dis- 
cussed ; his disease was typhus fever. Previous to delir- 
ium he had designated a physician, a celebrated profes- 
sor, who only prescribed gomme syrop. For a week I 
travelled with a Dominican friar who had so high a 
fever, that in America he would have been confined to 
his bed; he took no nourishment all the time but a 
plate of thin soup once a day ; and when we reached 
our destination, he was convalescent. Abstinence and 
repose are appreciated on the continent as remedial 
agencies ; but they are contrary to the genius of our 
people, who regard active enterprise as no less desira- 
ble in a doctor than a steamboat captain. 

Veteran practitioners have demonstrated that certain 
diseases are self-limited, that the art of treating dis- 
eases is still " a conjectural study," and avowed the con- 
viction that " the amount of death and disaster in the 
world would be less, if all disease were left to itself, 
than it now is under the multiform, reckless, and con- 
tradictory modes of practice." A conscientious student, 
of high personal character, entered upon the profession 
with enthusiastic faith ; experience in tlie use of reme- 
dies made him sceptical, and he resorted to evasion by 
giving water only under various pretexts and names; 
his success was so much greater than that of his breth- 
ren, that he felt bound to reveal the ruse, but continued 
thenceforth to assert that, all things being equal, more 
patients would survive, if properly guarded and nour- 
ished, without medicine than vvith. 

The influence of the mind upon the body is, in some 
instances, so great, that it accounts for that identity of 
superstition and medicine which is one of the most re- 



124 DOCTORS. 

markable traits in the history of the science. Sir Walter 
Raleigh's cordial was as famous in its day as Mrs. Trul- 
bery's water praised by Sir Roger de Coverley. In 
Egypt, old practitioners cure with amulets and charms ; 
among the Tartars they swallow the name of the rem- 
edy with perfect faith ; and from the Puritan horse-shoe, 
to keep off witchcraft, to Perkins' tractors to annihilate 
rheumatism, the history of medical delusions is rife with 
imaginary triumphs. As late as the seventeenth cen- 
tin-y, when Arabian precepts and the Jewish leech of 
chivalric times had disappeared, when the square cap 
and falling beards had given place to the wig and cane, 
in some places the mystic emblems of skull, stuffed 
lizards, pickled foetus, and alembic gave a necromantic 
air to the doctor's sanctum. 

The unknown is the source of the marvellous, and 
the relation between a disease and its cure is less obvi- 
ous to the common understanding, than that between 
the evidence and the verdict in a law case, or relig- 
ious faith and its public ministration in the office of 
priest. The imagination has room to act, and the sense 
of wonder is naturally excited, when, by the agency of 
some drug, mechanical apparatus, or mystic rite, it is 
attempted to relieve human suffering and dispel infirm- 
ity. Hence the most enlightened minds are apt to yield 
to credulity in this sphere, much to the annoyance of 
the " regular faculty," — who complain with reason that 
quackery, whether in the form of popular specifics or 
the person of a charlatan, derives its main support from 
men of civic and professional reputation. Think of Dr. 
Johnson, in his infancy, being touched for King's Evil 
by Queen Anne, in accordance with a belief in its sov- 
ereign efficiency, unquestioned for centuries. Sir Ken- 



DOCTORS. lib 

elm Digby was as much celebrated in his day for his 
recipe for a sympathetic powder, which he obtained 
from an Italian friar, as for his beautiful wife or his 
naval victory ; and the good Bishop Berkeley gave as 
much zeal to the " Treatise on the Virtues of Tar- Wa- 
ter," as to that on the " Immateriality of the Universe." 
Shakspeare has drawn a quack doctor to the life in 
Caius, the French physician, in the '" Merry Wives of 
Windsor," and uttered an impressive protest against 
the tribe in "All 's Well that Ends Well " : — 

" Kinrj. But may not be so credulous of cure, — 

When our most learned doctors leave us; and 

The congregated college have concluded 

That laboring art can never ransom nature 

From her inaidable estate: I say we must not 

So stain our judgment, or corrupt our hope, 

To prostitute our past-cure malady 

To empirics; or to dissever so 

Our great self and our credit, to esteem 

A senseless help, when help past sense we deem." 

An American member of the medical profession* has 
traced in the great bard of Nature a minute knowledge 
of the healing art, — citing his various allusions to dis- 
eases and their remedies : thus we have in Coriolanus 
the " post-prandial temper of a robust man," and the 
physiology of madness in Hamlet and Lear. The wast- 
ing effects of love, melancholy, the processes of diges- 
tion, respiration, circulation of the blood, infusion of 
humors, effects of passions on the body, of slow and 
swift poisons, insomnia, dropsy, and other phenomena 
described with accuracy. Caesar's fever in Spain, Gra- 
tiano's warning, " creep into a jaundice by being 

* ShaTcspenre' s Medical Knowledge, by Charles W. Stearns, M. D. 
New York: D. Appleton & Co. | 



126 DOCTORS. 

peevish ; " the physical effects of sensualism in Antony 
and Cleopatra, the external signs of sudden death from 
natural causes in Henry VI., and summary of diseases 
in Troilus and Cressida, are described with professional 
truth. How memorable his Apothecary's portrait ! while 
the medical critic assures us that, in a passage in " Mid- 
summer-Night's Dream," the "accessories of a sickly 
season are poetically described," and that Falstaff ad- 
mirably satirizes the " ambiguities of professional oj^in- 
ion," while, in Mrs. Quickly's description of his death, 
and the dying scene of Cardinal Beaufort, as well as 
the senility of Lear, the mellow virility of old Adam, 
the " thick coming fancies " of remorse, and Ophelia's 
aberration — every minute touch in the memorable pic- 
ture of " a mind diseased " — indicate a profound in- 
sight, and suggest, as no other poet can, how intimately 
and universally the " ills that flesh is heir to " and the 
vocation of those who minister to health, are woven into 
the web of human destiny and the scenes of human life. 
Who has so sweetly celebrated " Nature's sweet re- 
storer " and the " healing touch " ? or more emphati- 
cally declared, " when the mind 's free, the body 's deli- 
cate," and — 

" We are not ourselves 
"When nature, beinf;; oppressed, commands 
The mind to suffer with the body." 

The memoirs of celebrated men abound with physio- 
logical interest ; their eminence brings out facts which 
serve to vindicate impressively the phases of medical 
experience, and the relation of the soul to its tabernacle. 
Madden's " Infirmities of Genius " is a book which sug- 
gests an infinite charity, as well as exposes the fatal ef- 
fects of neglecting natural laws. Lord Byron used to 



DOCTORS. 127 

declare that a dose of salts exhilarated him more than 
wine. Shelley was a devoted vegetarian. Cowper spoke 
from experience when he sang the praises of the cups 
"that cheer but not inebriate." Johnson had faith in the 
sanative quality of dried orange peel. When Dr. Spurz- 
heim was first visited by the physicians in his last ill- 
ness, he told them to allow for the habitual irregularity 
of his pulse, which had intermitted ever since the death 
of his wife. George Combe used to tell a capital story, 
in his lectures, of the manner in which a pious Scotch 
lady made her grandson pass Sunday, whereby, while 
outwardly keeping the Sabbath, he violated all the rules 
of health. Two of the most characteristic books in 
British literature are Greene's poem of the " Spleen," 
and Dr. Cheyne's "English Malady;" and another is 
the history of the " Gold-Headed Cane," or rather of 
the five doctors that successively owned it. The cane, 
indeed, was ever an indispensable symbol of medical 
authority ; the story of Dr. Radcliffe's illustrates its 
modern significance, but the association of the walking- 
staff and the doctor comes down to us from mediaeval 
times. " He smelt his cane," in the old ballads, is a 
phrase suggestive of a then common expedient ; the 
head of the physician's cane was filled with disinfectant 
herbs, the odor of which the owner inhaled when ex- 
posed to miasma. Even at this day, in some of the 
provincial towns in Italy, we encounter the doctor in 
the pharmacist's shop, awaiting patients, — his dress 
and manner such as are reproduced in the comic drama, 
while the quack of the Piazza is recognized on the Op- 
eratic stage. 

How unprofessional medicine is becoming, may be 
seen in current literature, when De Quincey's metaphys- 



128 DOCTORS. 

ical account of the effects of opium, and Bulwer's fas- 
cinating plea for the Water-Cure, are ranked as light 
reading. To the lover of the old English prose-writers, 
there is no more endeared name than Sir Thomas 
Browne, and his " Religio Medici " and quaint tracts 
are among the choicest gifts for which philoso} hy is in- 
debted to the profession ; while the classical student 
owes to Dr. Middleton a " Life of Cicero." The viva- 
cious Lady Montagu is most gratefully remembered for 
her philanthropic efforts in behalf of inoculation for 
small-pox ; and our Brochden Brown has described the 
phenomena of an epidemic, in one of his novels, with 
more insight th(>U£:h less horror than De Foe. 

It is in pestilence and afler battle that the doctor 
sometimes rises to the moral sublime, in his disinter- 
ested and unwearied devotion to others. It must, how- 
ever, be confessed that, notwithstanding these incidental 
laurels, the authority of the profession has so declined, 
the malades imaginaires so increased with civilization, 
and the privileges of the faculty been so encroached 
upon by what is called " progress," that a doctor of the 
old school would scorn to tolerate the fallen dignity of 
a title that once rendered his intercourse with society 
oracular, and authorized him with impunity, to whip a 
king, as in the case of Dr. Willis and George the Third. 

" The philosophy of medicine, I imagine," observed 
Dr. Arnold, " is zero ; our practice is empirical, and 
seems hardly more than a course of guessing, more or 
less happy." None have been more sceptical than physi- 
cians themselves in regard to their own science : Brous- 
sais calls it illusory, like astrology; and Bichat declares, 
" it is, in respect to its principles, taken from most of 
our materia medicas, impracticable for a sensible man ; 



DOCTORS. ' 129 

an incoherent assemblage of incoherent opinions, it is, 
perhaps, of all the physiological sciences, the one which 
shows plainest the contradictions and wanderings of the 
human mind." Montaigne used to beseech his friends 
that, if he fell ill, they would let him get a little stronger 
before sending for the doctor. Louis XIV., who was a 
slave to his physicians, asked Moliere what he did for 
his doctor. " Oh sire," said he, " when I am ill, I 
send for him. He comes, we have a chat, and enjoy 
ourselves. He prescribes ; I don't take it, — and I am 
cured." 

" There is a certain analogy," says an agreeable writer, 
" between naval and medical men. Neither like to 
acknowledge the presence of danger." On the other 
hand, each patient's character as well as constitution 
makes a separate demand upon his sympathy; for in 
cases where fortitude and intelligence exist, perfect 
frankness is due, and in instances of extreme sensibility 
it may prove fatal ; so that the most delicate consider- 
ation is often required to decide on the expediency of 
enlightening the invalid. If it is folly to theorize in 
medicine, it is often sinful to flatter the imagination for 
the purpose of securing temporary ease. A physician's 
course, like that of men in all pursuits, is sometimes 
regulated by his consciousness, and he is apt to pre- 
scribe according to his own rather than his patient's 
nature ; thus a fleshy doctor is inclined to bleed, and 
recommend generous diet ; a nervous one affects mild 
anodynes ; a vain one talks science ; and a thin, cold- 
blooded, speculative one, makes safe expermients in 
practice, and is habitually non-committal in speech. 
Almost invariably short-necked plethoric doctors enjoy 
freeing the vessels of others by copious depletion, and 



130 • DOCTORS. 

those more delicately organized advocate fresh air and 
tonics; the one instinctively reasoning from the sur- 
plus, and the other from the inadequate vitality of which 
they are respectively conscious. I knew a doctor who 
scarcely ever failed to prescribe an emetic, and his ex- 
pression of countenance indicated chronic nausea. 

Medicine enjoys no immunity from the spirit of the 
age. Who does not recognize in the popularity of 
Hahnemann's system the influence of the transcendental 
philosophy, a kind of intuitive practice analogous to the 
vague terms of its disciples in literature; those little 
globules with the theoretical accompaniment catch the 
fancy ; castor-oil and the lancet are matter-of-fact in com- 
parison. And so with hydropathy. There is in our day 
what may be called a return-to-nature school. Words- 
worth is its expositor in poetry ; Fourier in social life, 
the Pre-Eaphaelites in painting. The newly appre- 
ciated efficacy of water accords with this principle. It 
is an elemental medicament, limpid as the style of 
Peter Bell, free from admixture as the individual labor 
in a model community, and as directly caught from Na- 
ture as the aerial perspective of England's late scenic 
limner. Even what has been considered the inevitable 
resort to dissection in order to acquire anatomical knowl- 
edge, it is now pretended, has a substitute in clairvoy- 
ance. Somewhat of truth in this spiritualizing tendency 
of science, there doubtless is, but Fact is the basis of 
positive knowledge, and the most unwarrantable of all 
experiments are those involving human health. 

If the mental experience of a doctor naturally leads to 
philosophy, the moral tends to make him a philanthro- 
pist. He is familiar with all the ills that flesh is heir to. 
The mystery of birth, the solemnity of death, the anxiety 



DOCTORS. 131 

of disease, the devotion of faith, the agony of despair, 
are phases of life daily open to his view ; and their con- 
templation, if there is in his nature a particle either of 
reflection or sensibility, must lead to a sense of human 
brotherhood, excite the impulse of benevolence, and 
awaken the spirit of humanity. Warren's " Diary of a 
Physician " gives us an inkling of what varieties of 
human experience are exposed to his gaze. Vigils at 
the couch of genius and beauty, full of the stern ro- 
mance of reality, or imbued with tenderness and inspi- 
ration, are recorded in his heart. He is admitted into 
sanctums where no other feet but those of kindred 
enter. He becomes the inevitable auditor and specta- 
tor where no other stranger looks or listens. Human 
nature, stripped of its conventionalities, lies exposed 
before him ; the secrets of conscience, the aspirations 
of intellect, the devotedness of love, all that exalts and 
all that debases the soul, he beholds in the hour of 
weakness, solitude, or dismay ; and hard and unthink- 
ing must he be, if such lessons make no enduring im- 
pression, and excite no comprehensive sympathies. 

" The corner-stone of health," says a German writer, 
" is to maintain our individuality intact ; " and while the 
hygienic reformer has lessened the bills of mortality, 
personal culture has emancipated society from much of 
the ignorant dependence and insalubrious habits of 
less enlightened times. 





HOLIDAYS. 

"And here I must have leave, in the fulness of my soul, to regret the aholi- 
tion and doing-away with altogether of those consolatory interstices and sprink- 
lings of freedom, through the four seasons — the red-letter days, now become 
to all intents and purposes dea.d-letter days.'- — Charles Lamb. 

HILE we accord a certain historical or ethical 
significance to our holidays, we also feel their 
casual tenure, their want of recreative zest, of 
enjoyable spirit, and of cordial popular estimation ; and 
are irresistibly prompted to discuss their claims as one 
of the neglected elements of our national life. It is an 
anomalous fact in our civilization, that we have no one 
holiday, the observance of which is unanimous. It is 
an exceptional trait in our nationality that its sentiment 
finds no annual occasion when the hearts of the people 
thrill with an identical emotion, absorbing in patriotic 
instinct and mutual reminiscence all personal interests 
and local prejudice. It is an unfortunate circumstance 
that no American festival, absolutely consecrated and 
universally acknowledged, hallows the calendar to the 
imagination of our people. Anniversaries enough, we 
boast, of historical importance, but they are casually 
observed ; events of glorious memory crowd our brief 
annals, but they are not consciously identified with re- 
curring periods; universal celebrities are included in 
the roll of our country's benefactors, but the dates of 
their birth, services, and decease, form no saints' days 
for the Republic. How often in the crises of sectional 



HOLIDAYS. 133 

passion does the moral necessity of a common shrine, 
a national feast, a place, a time, or a memory sacred 
to fraternal sympathies of general observance, appal 
the patriotic heart with regret, or warm it with desire ! 
How much of sectional misunderstanding, hatred, and 
barbarism culminating in a base and savage mutiny, 
will the future historian trace in the last analysis to the 
absence of a common sentiment and occasion of mutual 
pleasure and faith. Were such a nucleus for popular 
enthusiasm, such a goal for a nation's pilgrimage, such 
a day for reciprocal gratulation our own, — a time when 
the oath of fealty could be renewed at the same altar, 
the voice of encouragement be echoed from every sec- 
tion of the Union, the memory of what has been, the 
appreciation of what is, and the hope of what may be, 
simultaneously felt, what a bond of union, a motive to 
forbearance, and a pledge of nationality would be se- 
cured ! Were there not in us sentiments as well as ap- 
petites, reflection as well as passion, humanity might rest 
content with such "note of time" as is marked on a 
sun-dial or in the almanac ; but constituted as we are, 
a profound and universal instinct prompts observances 
wherewith faith, hope, and memory may keep register 
of the fieetino: hours and months. In accordance with 
this instinct, periodical sacrifice, song, prayer, and 
banquet, in all countries and ages, have inscribed with 
heartfelt ceremony the shadowy lapse of being. With- 
out law or art, the savage thus identifies his conscious- 
ness with the seasons and their transition ; anniversaries 
typifying vicissitude ; the wheel of custom stops a while ; 
events, convictions, reminiscences, and aspirations are 
personified in the calendar ; and that reason which 
" looks before and after," asserts itself under every guise 



134 HOLIDAYS. 

from the barbarian rite to the Christian festival, and be- 
gets the Holiday as an institution natural to man. If the 
ballads of a people are the essence of its history, holidays 
are, on similar grounds, the free utterance of its charac- 
ter : and as such, of great interest to the philosopher, and 
fraught with endearing associations to the philanthropist. 

The spontaneous in nations as well as individuals is 
attractive to the eye of philosophy, because it is emi- 
nently characteristic. The great charm of biography 
is its revelation of the play of mind and the aspect 
of character, when freed from conventional restraints. 
And, in the life of nations, how inadequate are the rec- 
ords of diplomacy, legislation, and war — the official 
and economical development — to indicate what is in- 
stinctive and typical in character ! It is when the armor 
of daily toil, the insignia of office, the prosaic routine 
of life, are laid aside, that what is peculiar in form and 
graceful in movement " become evident. In the glee or 
solemnity of the festival, the soul breaks forth ; in the 
fusion of a common idea, the heart of a country be- 
comes freely manifest. 

Accordingly, the manner, the spirit, and the object 
of festal observances are among the most significant 
illustrations of history. An accurate chart of these 
from the earliest time, would aftbrd a reliable index to 
the progress of humanity ; and suggest a remarkable 
identity of natural wants, tendencies, and aspirations. 
There is, for instance, a singular affinity between the 
Saturnalia of the ancient and the Carnival of the mod- 
ern Romans, the sports of the ancient circus and bull- 
fights of Spain ; while so closely parallel, in some re- 
spects, are Druidical and Monastic vows and fanaticism, 
that one of the most popular of modern Italian operas, 



HOLIDAYS. 135 

which revived the picturesque costume and sylvan rites 
of the Druids, was threatened with jDrohibition, as a 
satire upon the Church. It would, indeed, well repay 
antiquarian investigation, to trace the germ of holiday 
customs from the crude superstitions of barbarians, 
through the usages incident to a more refined mythol- 
ogy, to their modified reappearance in the Catholic 
temples, where Pagan rites are invested with Christian 
meaning, or the statue of Jupiter transformed into St. 
Peter, and the sarcophagus of a heathen becomes the 
font of holy baptism. Gibbon tells us how shrewd 
Pope Boniface professed but to rehabilitate old cus- 
toms, when he revived the secular games in Rome. 
Not only are traces of Pagan forms discoverable in the 
modern holidays, but the mediaeval taste for exhibitions 
of animal courage and vigor still lives in the love of 
prize-fights and horse-racing so prevalent in England, 
and the ring and the cockpit minister to the same bru- 
tal passions which of old filled the Flavian amphithea- 
tre w^ith eager spectators, and gave a relish to the ordeal 
of blood. In the abuses of the modern pastime we 
behold the relics of barbarism, and the perpetuity of 
such national tastes is evident in the combative instinct 
which once sustained the orders of chivalry, and in our 
day, has lured thousands to the destructive battle-fields 
of the Crimea and Virginia. 

Not only do the social organizations devoted to pop- 
ular amusements and economies, thus give the best 
tokens of local manners and average taste, but they 
directly minister to the culture they illustrate. The 
gladiator '' butchered to make a Roman holiday," nur- 
tured with his lifeblood and dying agonies the ferocious 
propensities and military hardihood of the imperial co- 



136 HOLIDAYS. 

horts. The graceful posture and fine muscular display 
of the wrestler, and discus-player of Athens, reappeared 
in the statues which peopled her squares and temples. 
The equine beauty and swiftness exhibited at Derby 
and Ascot, keep alive the emulation which renders 
England famous for breeds of horses, and her gentry 
healthful by equestrian exercise. The custom of musi- 
cal accompaniments at every German symposium has, 
in a great measure, bred a nation of vocal and instru- 
mental performers. The dance became a versatile art 
in France, because it was, as it still is, the national pas- 
time. The Circassian is expert with steed and rifle 
from the habit of dexterity acquired in the festive trials 
of skill, excellence in which is the qualification for lead- 
ership. The compass, flexibility, and sweetness of the 
human voice so characteristic of the people of Italy, have 
been attained through ages of vocal practice in eccle- 
siastical and rural festivals ; and the copious melody of 
their language gradually arose through the canzoni of 
troubadours and the rhythmical feats of improvisatori. 
The deafening clang of gongs, the blinding smoke of 
chowsticks, and the dazzling light of innumerable lan- 
terns, wherewith the Chinese celebrate their national 
feasts, are to European senses the most oppressive im- 
aginable token of a stagnant and primitive civilization ; 
the festive elements of the semi-barbarism artistically 
represented by their grotesque figures, ignorance of 
perspective, interminable alphabet, pinched feet, bare 
scalps, and implacable hatred of innovation, both in the 
processes and the forms of advanced taste. 

Even the aboriginal feasts of this continent were the 
best indication of what the American Indians, in their 
palmy days, could boast of strength, agility, and grace. 



HOLIDAYS. 137 

Thus, from the most cultivated to the least developed 
races, what is adopted and expressed in a recreative or 
holiday manner, — what is thus done and said, sought 
and felt, — the rally ing-point of popular sympathy, the 
occasion of the universal joy or reverence, is a moral 
fact of unique and permanent interest, — on the one 
hand, as illustrative of the kind and degree of civiliza- 
tion attained, and of the instinctive direction of the 
national mind, and, on the other, as indicative of the 
means and the processes whereby the wants are met 
and the ideas realized, which stimulate and mould a 
nation's genius and faith. 

The testimony of observation accords with that of 
history in this regard. The foreign scenes which haunt 
the memory as popular illustrations of character, are 
those of Holidays. The government, literature, art, 
and society of a country may be individually repre- 
sented to our minds; but when we discuss national 
traits, we instinctively refer to the pastimes, the relig- 
ious ceremonials, and the festivals of a people. Where 
has the pugilistic hilarity of the Irish scope as at Donny- 
brook Fair ? Is a dull parliamentary speech, or an an- 
imated debate at the race-course, most vivid with the 
spirit of English life ? Market-day, and harvest-home, 
and saintly anniversaries, evoke from its commonplace 
level the life of the humble and the princely, and they 
appear before the stranger under a genuine and char- 
acteristic guise. We associate the French, as a people, 
with the rustic groups under the trees of Montmorenci, 
or the crowds of neatly-dressed and gay hourgeoise at 
the Jardiri d'Hiver, — finding in the green grass, lights, 
cheap wine and comfits, a flower in the hair, a waltz and 
saunter, more real pleasure than a less frugal and mer- 



138 HOLIDAYS. 

curial people can extract from a solemn feast, garnished 
with extravagant upholstery, and loaded with luxurious 
viands. We recall the Italians and Spaniards by the 
ceaseless bells of \kQiv festas vibrating in the air, and 
the golden necklace and graceful mezzano of the peas- 
ant's holiday ; the tinkle of guitars, the holero and pro- 
cessions, or the lines of stars marking the architecture 
of illuminated temples, the euphonious greeting, the 
light-hearted carol, the abundant fruit, the knots of 
flowers, the gay jerkin and bodice, which render the 
urbane throng so picturesque in aspect and childlike in 
enjoyment. The sadness which overhung the very idea 
of Italy, considered as a political entity, exhaled like 
magic, before the spectacle of a Tuscan vintage. The 
heaps of purple and amber fruit, the gray and pensive- 
eyed oxen, the reeking butts, the yellow vine-leaves 
waving in the autumn sun, form studies for the pencil ; 
but the human interest of the scene infinitely endears 
its still life. Kindred and friends, in festal array, cele- 
brate their work, and rejoice over the Falernian, Lach- 
ryma Christi, or Vino Nostrale, with a frank and naive 
gratitude akin to the mellow smile of productive Na- 
ture ; the distance between the lord of the soil and the 
peasant is, for the time, lost in a mutual and innocent 
triumph ; they who are wont to serve become guests ; 
the dance and song, the compliment and repartee, the 
toast and the smile, are interchanged, on the one side 
with artless loyalty, and on the other with a condescen- 
sion merged in graciousness. It seems as if the hand 
of Nature in yielding her annual tribute, literally im- 
parted to prince and peasant the touch which makes 
" the whole world kin." 
The contrast, in respect of pastime, is felt most keenly 



HOLIDAYS. 139 

when we observe life at home, with the impressions of 
the Old World fresh in our minds. We have perhaps 
joined the laughing group who cluster round Punch 
and Judy on the Mole of Naples ; we have watched the 
flitting emotions on swarthy listeners who greedily drink 
in the story-teller's words on the shore of Palermo ; we 
have made an old gondolier chant a stanza of Tasso, at 
sunset, on the Adriatic ; our hostess at Florence has 
decked the window with a consecrated branch on Palm 
Sunday ; we have seen the poor contadini of a Roman 
village sport their silver knobs and hang out their one 
bit of crimson tapestry, in honor of some local saint ; 
we have examined the last mosaic exhumed from Pom- 
qoeii, brilliant with festal rites, and thus, as an element 
both of history and experience, of religion and domes- 
ticity, the recreative side of life appears essential and 
absolute, while the hurrying crowd, hasty salutations, 
and absorption in affairs around us, seem to repudiate 
and ignore the inference, and to confirm the opinion of 
one whose existence was divided between this country 
and Europe, that " the Americans are practical Stoics." 
To appreciate the value of holidays merely as a con- 
servative element of faith, we have but to remember the 
Jewish festivals. Ages of dispersion, isolation, contempt, 
and persecution, — all that mortal agencies can eJEFect to 
chill the zeal or to discredit the traditions of the He- 
brews, — have not, in the slightest degree, lessened the 
sanction or diminished the observance of that festival, 
to keep which the Divine Founder of our religion, nine- 
teen centuries ago, went up to Jerusalem with his disci- 
ples. And it is difficult to conceive a more sublime 
idea than is involved in this fact. On the day of the 
Passover, in the Austrian banker's splendid palace, in 



140 HOLIDAYS. 

the miserable Ghetto of Rome, under the shadow of 
Syrian mosques, in the wretched by-way hostel of Po- 
land, at the foot of Egyptian pyramids, beside the Holy 
Sepulchre, among the money-changers of Paris and the 
pawnbrokers of London, along the canals of Holland, 
in Siberia, Denmark, Calcutta, and New York, in every 
nook of the civilized world, the Jew celebrates his holy 
national feast ; and who can estimate how much this and 
similar rites have to do with the eternal marvel of that 
nation's survival ? 

The conservatism inherent in traditional festivals not 
only binds together and keeps intact the scattered com- 
munities of a dispersed race, but saves from extinction 
many local and inherited characteristics. I was never 
so impressed with this thought as on the occasion of an 
annual village fete in Sicily. Perhaps no territory of 
the same limits comprehends such a variety of elements 
in the basis of its existent population, as that luxuriant 
and beautiful but ill-fated island. Its surface is vener- 
able with the architectural remains of successive races. 
Here a Grecian temple, there a Saracenic dome ; now 
a Roman fortification, again a Norman tower ; and 
often a mediaeval ruin of some incongruous order, at- 
tracts the traveller's gaze from broad valleys rich with 
grain, olive - orchards, and citron - groves, vineyards 
planted in decomposed lava, hedges of aloe, meadows 
of wild-flowers, a torrent's arid path, a holly-crowned 
mountain, a cork forest, or seaward landscape. But the 
more flexible materials left by the receding tide of in- 
vasion are so blended in the physiognomies, the customs, 
and the patois of the inhabitants, that only nice investi- 
gation can trace them amid the generic phenomena of 
nationality now recognized as Sicilian. Yet the people 



HOLIDAYS. 141 

of a village but a few miles from the Capital, have so 
identified their Greek origin with the costume of a hoi- 
iday, that, as one scans their festal array, it is easy to 
imagine that the unmixed blood of their classic pro- 
genitors flushes in the dark eyes and mantles in the 
olive cheeks. This ancestral dress is the endeared heir- 
loom in the homes of the peasantry, assumed with con- 
scious pride and gayety, to meet the wondering eyes 
of neighboring contadini, curious Palermitans, and de- 
lighted strangers, who flock to the spectacle. 

The love of power is a great teacher of human in- 
stincts ; and despotism, both civil and spiritual, has, in 
all ages, availed itself of the natural instinct for festi- 
vals, to multiply and enhance shows, amusements, and 
holidays, in a manner which yields profitable lessons to 
free communities intent on adapting the same means to 
nobler ends. The stated pilgrimage to the tomb of the 
Prophet is an important part of the superstitious ma- 
chinery of the Mahommedan tyranny over the will and 
conscience ; and it is difficult to conceive now to what 
an extent the zeal and unity of the early Christians were 
enforced by specific days of ceremonial, and by such a 
hallowed goal as Jerusalem. 

Imperial authority in France is upheld by festive 
seductions adapted to a vivacious populace, and by 
masque balls, municipal banquets, showers of bon- 
bons, and ascent of balloons, contrives to win attention 
from republican discontent. Mercenary rulers of petty 
States, by the gift of stars and red ribbons, and liberal 
contributions to the opera, obtain an economical safe- 
guard. The policy of the Romish Church is nowhere 
more striking than in her holiday institutions, appealing 
to native sentiment through pageantry, music, and im- 



142 HOLIDAYS. 

pressive rites in honor of saints, martyrs, and departed 
friends, to propitiate their intercession or to endear 
their memories. 

While the pastimes in vogue typify the national mind, 
and are to serious avocations what the efflorescence of 
the tree is to its fruit, — a bountiful pledge and augury 
of prolific energy, — it is only when kept as holidays, 
set apart by law and usage, consecrated by time and 
sympathy, that such observances attain their legitimate 
meaning ; and to this end, a certain affinity with char- 
acter, a spontaneous and not conventional impulse is 
essential. The Tournament, for instance, was the nat- 
ural and appropriate pastime of the age of chivalry ; it 
fostered knightly prowess, and made patent the twin- 
born inspiration of love and valor. As described in 
Ivanhoe, it accords intimately with the spirit of the age 
and the history of the times ; as exhibited to the utili- 
tarian vision and mercantile habits of our own day, in 
Virginia, it comes no nearer our associations than any 
theatrical pageant chosen at hap-hazard. What other 
sjDecies of grown men could, in this age, enact every year, 
in the neighborhood of Rome, the scenes which make 
the artists' holiday ? As a profession, they retain the 
instincts of childhood, with little warping from the world 
around. But imagine a set of mechanics or merchants 
attempting such a masquerade. The invention, the 
fancy, the independence, and the abandon congenial 
with artist-life, gives unity, picturesqueness, and grace 
to the pageant; and the speeches, costumes, feasting, 
and drollery, are preeminently those of an artist's car- 
nival. It is indispensable that the spirit of a holiday 
should be native to the scene and the people ; and 
hence all endeavors to graft local pastimes upon foreign 



HOLIDAYS. 143 

communities, signally fail. This is illustrated in our 
immediate vicinity. The genial fellowship and exuber- 
ant hospitality with which the first day of the year is 
celebrated in New York were characteristic among the 
Dutch colonists, and have been transmitted to their pos- 
terity ; while the tone of New England society, though 
more intellectual, is less urbane and companionable ; 
accordingly, the few enthusiasts who have attempted it 
have been unable, either by precept or example, to make 
a Boston New Year's day the complete and hearty fes- 
tival which renders it par excellence the holiday of the 
Knickerbockers. Charitable enterprise, for several 
years past, in the Puritan city has distinguished May- 
day as a children's floral anniversary ; but who that is 
familiar with the peasant-songs that hail this advent 
of summer in the south of Europe, ever beheld the 
shivering infants and the wilted leaves, paraded in the 
teeth of an east wind, without a conscious recoil from 
the anomalous fite ? The facts of habit, public senti- 
ment, natural taste, local association, and of climate, 
cannot be ignored in holiday institutions, which, like 
eloquence, as defined by Webster, must spring directly 
from the men, the subject, and the occasion. Any other 
source is unstable and factitious. Of all affectations, 
those of diversion are the least endurable ; and there is 
no phase of social life more open to satire, nor any that 
has provoked it to more legitimate purpose, than the 
affectation of a taste for art, sporting, the ball-room, the 
bivouac, the gymnasium, foreign travel, country life, 
nautical adventure, and literary amusements ; an affec- 
tation yielding, as we know, food for the most spicy 
irony, from Goldoni's Filosofo Inglese to Hood's cockney 
ruralist and Punch's amateur sportsman or verdant tour- 



144 HOLIDAYS. 

ist. And what is true of personal incongruities, is only 
the more conspicuous in social and national life. 

When our literary pioneer sought to waken the fra- 
ternal sentiment of his countrymen towards their ances- 
tral land, he described with sympathetic zest an English 
Christmas in an old family mansion ; and the most pop- 
ular of modern novelists can find no more potent spell 
whereby to excite a charitable glow in two hemispheres 
than a " Christmas Carol." In New as well as in Old 
England, the once absolute sway of this greatest of 
Christian festivals has been checked by Puritan zeal. 
We must look to the ancient ballads, obsolete plays, and 
musty Church traditions, to ascertain what this hallowed 
season was in the British Islands, when wassail and the 
yule-log, largess and the Lord of Misrule, the mistletoe 
bough, boars' heads, holly wreaths, midnight chimes, 
the feast of kindred, the anthem, the prayer, the games 
of children, the good cheer of the poor, forgiveness, 
gratulation, worship, — all that revelry hails and relig- 
ion consecrates, — made holiday in palace, manor, and 
cottage, throughout the land ; winter's robe of ermine 
everywhere vividly contrasting with evergreen decora- 
tions, the frosty air with the warmth of household fires, 
the cold sky with the incense of hospitable hearths ; 
when King Charles acted, Ben Jonson wrote a masque, 
Milton a hymn, lords and peasants flocked to the altar, 
parents and children gathered round the board, and 
church, home, wayside, town and country bore witness 
to one mingled and hearty sentiment of festivity. Iden- 
tical in season with the Roman Saturnalia, and the time 
when the Scalds let " wildly loose their red locks fly," 
Christmas is sanctioned by all that is venerable in asso- 
ciatJon as well as tender and joyous in faith. It is 



HOLIDAYS. 145 

deeply to be regretted that with us its observance is al- 
most exclusively confined to the Romanists and Episco- 
palians. The sentiment of all Christian denominations 
is equally identified with its commemoration, the event 
it celebrates being essentially memorable alike to all 
who profess Christianity ; and although the forlorn de- 
scription by Pepys of a Puritan Christmas will not 
apply to the occasion here, its comparative neglect, 
which followed Bloody Mary's reign, continues among 
too many of the sects that found refuge in America. 
There are abundant indications that if the clergy would 
initiate the movement, the laity are prepared to make 
Christmas among us the universal religious holiday 
which every consideration of piety, domestic affection, 
and traditional reverence unite to proclaim it. 

The humanities of time, if we may so designate the 
periods consecrated to repose and festivity, were thor- 
oughly appreciated by the most quaint and genial of 
English essayists. The boon of leisure, the amenities 
of social intercourse, the sacredness and the humors of 
old-fashioned holidays, have found their most loving 
interpreter, in our day, in Charles Lamb. Hear him : — 

" I must have leave, in the ^Iness of my soul, to regret the 
abolition and doing-away-with-altogether of those consolatory 
interstices and sprinklings of freedom through the four seasons, 
the red-letter-clays^ now become, to all intents and purposes, 
dead-letter-days. There was Paul and Stephen and Barnabas, 
Andrew and John, men famous in old times, — we used to 
keep all their days holy, as long back as when I was at school 
at Christ's. I remember their effigies by the same token, in 
the old Basket Prayer-Book. I honored them all, and could 
almost have wept the defalcation of Iscariot, so much did we 
love to keep holy memories sacred ; only methought I a little 
10 



146 HOLIDAYS. 

o:nido-ed at the coalition of the better Jude -with Simon, — 
clubbing (as it were) their sanctities together to make up one 
poor gaudy-day between them, as an economy unworthy of 
the dispensation. These were bright visitations in a scholar's 
and a clerk's life, — ' far-off their coming shone.' I was as 
good as an almanac in those days." * 

And who has written, like Lamb, of the forlorn pathos 
of the charity boy's " objectless holiday " ; of the " most 
touching peal which rings out the old year" ; of "the 
safety which a palpable hallucination warrants " on All- 
Fools' ; and the " Immortal Go-between," St. Valentine ? 

The devotion to the immediate, the thrift, the enter- 
prise, and the material activity which pertain to a new 
country, and especially to our own, distinguish Ameri- 
can holidays from those of the Old World. Not a few 
of them are consecrated to the future, many sprmg from 
the triumphs of the present, and nearly all hint progress 
rather than retrospection. "We inaugurate civil and 
local improvements; glorify the achievements of me- 
chanical skill and of social reform ; pay honor by feasts, 
processions, and rhetoric, to public men ; give a muni- 
cipal ovation to a foreign patriot, or a funeral pageant 
to a native statesman. Our festivals are chiefly on oc- 
casions of economic interest. Daily toil is suspended, 
and gala assemblies convene, to rejoice over the comple- 
tion of an aqueduct or a railroad, or the launching of an 
ocean steamer. One of the earliest of these economi- 
cal displays — in New York, memorable equally from 
the great principle it initiated and the felicitous auguries 
of the holiday itself — was the celebration of the open- 
ing of the Erie Canal, the first of a series of grand 
internal improvements which have since advanced our 
national prosperity beyond all historical precedent ; and 
* Essays of JEHa. 



HOLIDAYS. 147 

one of the last was the grand excursion which signal- 
ized the union by railroads of the Atlantic sea-coast and 
the Mississippi River. The two celebrations were but 
festive landmarks in one magnificent system. The en- 
terprise initiated in Western New York, in 1825, was 
consunmiated in Illinois, in 1854, when the last link was 
riveted to the chain which binds the vast line of eastern 
sea-coast to the great river of the West, and the genius 
of communication, so essential to our unity and prosper- 
ity, brought permanently together the boundless har- 
vest-fields of the interior and the mighty fleets of the 
sea-board. To European eyes the sight of the thousand 
invited guests conveyed from New York to the Falls of 
St. Anthony would yield a thrilling impression of the 
scale of festal arrangements in this Republic ; and were 
they to scan the reports of popular anniversaries and 
conventions in our journals, embracing every class and 
vocation, representative of every art, trade, and inter- 
est, a conviction would inevitably arise that we are the 
most social and holiday nation in the world; on the 
constant qui vive for any plausible excuse for public 
dinners, speeches, processions, songs, toasts, and other 
republican divertisements. One month brings round 
the anniversary banquet of the Printers, when Frank- 
lin's memory is invoked and his story rehearsed ; an- 
other is marked by the annual symposium and contri- 
butions of the Dramatic Fund ; a Temperance jubilee 
is announced to-day, a picnic of Spiritualists to-morrow ; 
here we encounter a long train of Sunday-scholars, and 
there are invited to a Publishers' feast in a " crystal pal- 
ace " ; the triumph of the " Yacht America " must be 
celebrated this week, and the anniversary of Clay's birth 
or Webster's death the next ; a clerk delivers a poem 



148 HOLIDAYS. 

before a Mercantile Library Association, a mechanic 
addresses his fellows ; exhibitions of fruit, of fowls, 
of cattle, of machines, of horses, ploughing - matches, 
schools, and pictures, lead to social gatherings and vol- 
unteer discourses, and make a holiday now for the far- 
mer and now for the artisan, so that the programme of 
festivals, such as they are, is coextensive with the land 
and the calendar. All this proves that there is no lack 
of holiday instinct among us, but it also demonstrates 
that the spirit of utility, the pride of occupation, and 
the ambition of success, interfuse the recreative as they 
do the serious life of America. The American enters 
into festivity as if it were a serious business ; he cannot 
take pleasure naturally like the European, and is pur- 
sued with a half-conscious remorse if he dedicates time 
to amusement ; so that even our holidays seem rather an 
ordeal to be gone through with than an occasion to be 
enjoyed. At many of these fetes, too, we are painfully 
conscious of interested motives, which are essentially 
opposed to genuine recreation. Capital is made of 
amusement as of every other conceivable element of 
our national life. It is often to advertise the stock, to 
introduce the breed, to gain political influence, to win 
fashionable suffrages to a scheme or a product of art or 
industry, that these expensive arrangements are made, 
these hospitalities exercised, these guests convened. 
Too many of our so-called holidays are tricks of trade ; 
too many are exclusively utilitarian ; too many conse- 
crate external success and material well-being ; and too 
few are based on sentiment, taste, and good-fellowship. 
In a panorama of national holidays, therefore, instead 
of a crowd of gracefully attired rustics waltzing under 
trees, an enthusiastic chorus, breathing, as one deep 



HOLIDAYS. 149 

voice, the popular chant, ladies veiled in tuile following 
an imperial infant to a cathedral altar, the garlands and 
maidens of Old England's May-day, or the splendid 
evolutions of the continental soldiery, — we should be 
most aptly represented by a fleet of steamers with 
crowded decks and gay pennons, sweeping through the 
lofty and wooded bluffs of the Upper Mississippi, the 
procession of boats and regiment of marines disem- 
barking in the bay of Jeddo, or the old Hall, in whose 
sleeping echoes lives the patriotic eloquence of the Rev- 
olution, alive with hundreds of children invited by the 
city authorities to the annual school festival ; for these 
occasions typify the enterprise at home, the exploration 
abroad, and the system of public instruction, which con- 
stitute our specific and absolute distinction in the family 
of nations. A jovial eclectic could, notwithstanding, 
gather traces of the partial and isolated festivals of 
every race and country in America ; harvest - songs 
among the German settlers of Pennsylvania, here a 
" golden wedding," there a private grape-feast ; in the 
South a tournament, at Hoboken a cricket-match, and 
an archery club at Sunnyside ; a Vienna lager - beer 
dance in New York, or a vine-dressers' merry-making 
in Ohio. 

If from those holidays which arise from temporary 
causes, we turn to those which, from annual recurrence, 
aspire to the dignity of institutions, the first thing which 
strikes us is their essentially local character. " Pil- 
grim Day," wherever kept, is a New England festival ; 
" Evacuation Day " belongs to the city of New York ; 
the anniversary of the battle of Bunker Hill is cele- 
brated only in Charlestown ; and the victory on Lake 
Erie, at Newport, where its hero resided. The events 



150 HOLIDAYS. 

thus commemorated deserve their eminence in our re- 
gard ; and patriotic sentiment is excited and maintained 
by such observances. Yet, in many instances, they have 
dwindled to a lifeless parade, and in others have become 
a somewhat invidious exaggeration of local self-com- 
placency. The latter is the case, for instance, with the 
New England Society's annual feast in the commercial 
metropolis of the Union. It occasionally tries the pa- 
tience and vexes the liberal sentiment of the considerate 
son of New England, to hear the reiterated laudation 
of her schools, her clergy, her women, her codfish, and 
her granite, at the hospitable board where sits, perhaps, 
a venerable Knickerbocker, conscious that the glib ora- 
tors and their people have worked themselves into all 
places of honor and profit, where the honest burgomas- 
ter used to smoke the pipe of peace and comfort in his 
generous portico, his children now superseded by the 
restless emigrants from the Eastern States, thus boast- 
fully tracing all that redeems and sustains the republic 
to the wisdom, foresight, and moral superiority of their 
own peculiar ancestry. The style of the festival is often 
in bad taste ; there is too little recognition of the hos- 
pitality of their adopted home, too little respect for 
Manhattan blood ; an exuberance of language too con- 
spicuously triumphant over a race which the best of 
comic histories illustrates by the reign of Peter the 
Silent, so that, at length, a jocose reproof was adminis- 
tered by the toast of a humorist present, who gave, with 
irresistible nasal emphasis, — " Plymouth Rock, — the 
Blarney-Stone of New England." 

It is, however, an appropriate illustration of the cos- 
mopolitan population of New York, that every year her 
English, Scotch, Welsh, Irish, French, German, and 



HOLIDAYS. 151 

Dutch children, after their own fashion, recall their 
respective national associations. In point of oratory 
the New England Society carries the day, inasmuch as 
it usually presses into its service some distinguished 
speaker from abroad ; in geniality, antique customs, and 
long-drawn reminiscences, the St. Nicholas excels ; at 
St. Andrew's board the memory of Burns is revived in 
song ; Monsieur extols his vanished Repuhlique ; Welsh 
harps tinkle at St. David's ; " God save the Queen " 
echoes under the banner of St. George ; green sprigs 
and uncouth garments mark the Irish procession of St. 
Patrick ; " and the Germans multiply their festivals 
by summer picnics, at which lager-beer, waltzing, and 
fine instrumental music recall the gardens of Vienna. 
" Thanksgiving-Day " is of Puritan origin, and was 
designed to combine family reunions with a grateful 
recognition of the autumnal harvest. The former 
beautiful feature is not as salient now as when the ab- 
sence of locomotive facilities made it a rare privilege 
for the scattered members of a household to come to- 
gether around the paternal hearth. The occasion has 
also diminished in value as one of clerical emancipa- 
tion from Sabbath themes, when the preacher could 
expatiate unreproved on the questions of the day and 
the aspects of the times, — that privilege being now 
exercised, at will, on the regular day of weekly re- 
ligious service. " Fast-Day " has also become anom- 
alous ; its abolition or identification with Good- Friday 
has been repeatedly advocated ; strictly speaking, its 
title is a misnomer, and the actual observance of it 
is too partial and ineffective to have any true sig- 
nificance. 

An old town on the north-eastern extremity of an 



152 HOLIDAYS. 

island, the nearest approach to which overland is from 
the southern shore of Cape Cod, was eagerly visited 
annually until within a few years, by those who delight 
in primitive character and local festivals. The broad 
plain beyond the town, was long held in common prop- 
erty by the inhabitants, as a sheep-pasture. It may be 
that the maritime occupations of the natives, their in- 
sular position and frugal habits imparted, by contrast, a 
singular relish to the rural episode thus secured in their 
lives of hazardous toil and dreary absence, as sailors 
and whalemen ; but it is remarkable that amid the sands 
of that island flourished one of the heartiest and most 
characteristic of New England festivals. SimiDlicity of 
manners, hardihood, frankness, the genial spirit of the 
mariner, and the unsophisticated energy and kindliness 
of the sailor's wife, gave to the Nantucket " Sheep- 
shearing" a rare and permanent freshness and charm. 
Unfortunately discord, arising from the conflicting in- 
terests of these primitive islanders, at length made it 
desirable to restore peace by sacrificing the flocks, — 
innocent provocations of this domestic feud ; — the sheep 
were sold, and the unique festival to which they gave 
occasion vanished with them. We must turn to that 
most available resource, an old newspaper, for a descrip- 
tion of this now obsolete holiday : — 

" SJieejj-shearing. — This patriarchal festival was celebrated 
on Monday and Tuesday last, in this place, with more than 
ordinary interest. For some days previous, the sheep-drivers 
had been busily employed in collecting from all quarters of 
the Island the dispersed members of the several flocks ; and 
committing them to the great sheepfold, about two miles from 
town, preparatory to the ceremonies of ablution and devest- 
ment. 



HOLIDAYS. 153 

"The principal enclosure contains three hundred acres; 
towards one side of this area, and near the margin of a con- 
siderable pond, are four or five circular fences, one within the 
other, — like Captain Symmes's concentric curves, — and about 
twenty feet apart, forming a sort of labyrinth. Into these cir- 
cuits the sheep are gradually driven, so as to be designated by 
their " ear-marks," and secured for their proper owners in 
sheep-cotes arranged laterally, or nearly so, around the exte- 
rior circle. Contiguous to these smaller pens, each of which is 
calculated to contain about one hundred sheep, the respective 
owners had erected temporary tents, wherein the operation of 
shearing was usually performed. The number of hands en- 
gaged in this service may be imagined from the fact that one 
gentleman is the owner of about 1000 sheep, another of 700, 
and numerous others of smaller flocks, varying in number from 
three or four hundred down to a single dozen. The business 
of identifying, seizing, and yarding the sheep, creates a degree 
of bustle that adds no small amusement to the general activity 
of the scene. The whole number of sheep and lambs brought 
within the great enclosure is said to be 16,000. There are 
also several large flocks commonly sheared at other parts of 
the Island. 

" As these are the only important holidays which the inhab- 
itants of Nantucket have ever been accustomed to observe, it 
is not to be marvelled at that all other business should on such 
occasions be suspended ; and that the labors attendant thereon 
should be mingled with a due share of recreation. Accord- 
ingly, the fancies of the juvenile portion of our community 
are, for a long time prior to the annual " Shearing," occupied 
in dreams of fun and schemes of frolic. With the mind's eye, 
they behold the long array of tents, surmounted with motley 
banner's flaunting in the breeze, and stored with tempting 
titbits, candidates for money and for mastication. With the 
mind's ear they distinguish the spirit-stirring screak of the 
fiddle, the gruff jangling of the drum, the somniferous smor- 
zando of the jews-harp, and the enlivening scufile of little feet 
in a helter-skelter jig upon a deal platform. And their vis- 



154 HOLIDAYS. 

ions, unlike those of riper mortals, are always realized. For 
be it known, that independent of the preparations made by 
persons actually concerned in the mechanical duties of the 
day, there are erected on a rising ground in the vicinity of the 
sheep-field, some twenty pole and sail-cloth edifices, furnished 
with seats, and tables, and casks, and dishes, severally filled 
with jocund faces, baked pigs, punch, and cakes, and sur- 
rounded with divers savory concomitants in the premises, 
courteously dispensed by the changeful master of ceremonies, 
studious of custom and emulous of cash. For the accommoda- 
tion of those merry urchins and youngsters who choose to 
' trip it on the light fantastic toe,' a floor is laid at one corner, 
over which presides some African genius of melody, brandish- 
ing a cracked violin, and drawing most moving notes from its 
agonized intestines, by dint of griping fingers and right-angled 
elbows. 

" We know of no parallel for this section of the entertain- 
ment, other than what the Boston boys were wont to denomi- 
nate '' N'ujiier 'Lection' ■ — so called in contradistinction from 
'■Artillery Election.' At the former anniversary, which is the 
day on which ' who is Governor ' is officially announced, the 
blacks and blackees are permitted to perambulate the Mall 
and Common, to buy gingerbread and beer with the best of 
folks, and to mingle in the mysteries of pawpaw. But on the 
latter day, when that grave and chivalrous corps, known as 
the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, parade for 
choice of officers, — which officers are to receive their diplo- 
mas directly from the hands of His Excellency the Governor 
and Commander-in-Chief, in open day, and in the august pres- 
ence of all sorts of civil and martial dignitaries, — why, woe 
to the sable imp that shall then adventure his woolly poll 
and tarnished cuticle within the hallowed neighborhood of 
nobility ! 

" On previous days the sheep had been collected from 
every quarter of the Island, driven into the great fold at Mia- 
comet (the site of an ancient Indian settlement, about a mile 
from town), selected and identified by their respective own- 



HOLIDAYS. 155 

ers, placed in separate pens, and subjected to the somewhat 
arduous process of washing, in the large pond contiguous. 
After this preparatory ablution, they were then ready to 
' throw off this muddy vesture of decay ' by the aid of some 
hundreds of shearers, who began to ply their vocation on 
Monday morning, seated in rude booths, or beneath umbra- 
geous awnings ranged around the circular labyrinth of enclo- 
sures, wherein the panting animals awaited the divestment of 
their uncomfortable jackets. The space partially occupied by 
the unshorn and their contented lambs, and in other spots 
exhibiting multitudes stripped of their fleece and clamorously 
seeking their wandering young, presented to the eye and ear 
of the stranger sights and sounds somewhat rare." 

We have sometimes been tempted to believe that all 
illustrious occasions, men, and things in this republic 
must inevitably be profaned, — that, as a compensatory 
balance to the " greatest good of the greatest number," 
secured by democratic institutions, there must exist a 
sacrifice of the hallowed, aspiring, and consecrated ele- 
ments of national feeling and achievement. If there 
is an anniversary which should compel respect, excite 
eternal gratitude, and win unhackneyed observance, it 
is that of the day when, for the first time in the world's 
history, the select intelligences of a country proclaimed 
to the nations, with deliberate and resolved wisdom, 
the principles of human equality and the right of self- 
government, pledged thereto their lives, fortunes, and 
honor, and consistently redeemed the heroically pro- 
phetic pledge. Subsequent events have only deepened 
the significance of that act and extended its agency; 
every succeeding year has increased its moral value and 
its material fruits ; the career of other and less happy 
nations has given more and more relief to its isolated 
grandeur ; and not a day fraught with more hope and 



156 HOLIDAYS, 

glory lives in the calendar. Yet what is the actual 
observance, the average estimation, it boasts among us ? 
In our large cities, especially in New York, " Indepen- 
dence " is, by universal consent, a nuisance. It is most 
auspicious to the Chinese, from increasing the importa- 
tion of fire-crackers. The municipal authorities pro- 
vide for it, as for a lawless saturnalia ; the fire-depart- 
ment dread its approach as indicative of conflagrations ; 
physicians, as hazardous to such unfortunate patients 
as cannot be removed into the country ; quiet citizens, 
as insufferable from incessant detonation ; the prudent, 
as fraught with reckless tomfoolery; and the respec- 
table, as desecrated by rowdyism. John Adams, when 
he prophesied that the Fourth of July would be hailed, 
in all after-time, by the ringing of bells, the blaze of 
bonfires, and the roar of cannon, was far from intend- 
ing, by this programme of Anglo-Saxon methods of 
popular rejoicing, to indicate the exclusive and ultimate 
style of our national holiday. On its earlier recur- 
rence, when many of the actors in the scenes it com- 
memorates still lived, there was an interest and a mean- 
ing in the ceremonies which time has lessened. Yet it 
is difficult to account for the absence of all that high 
civilization presupposes, in the celebration of our only 
holiday which can strictly be called national ; and if 
the sympathies of the most intelligent of our citizens 
could be enlisted, so as to make the occasion a genuine 
patriotic jubilee, instead of a noisy carnival, or a time 
for political animosity to assert itself with special em- 
phasis, much would be gained on the score of rational 
enjoyment and American fraternity. As it is, although 
the " Hundred Boston Orators " nobly vindicate the 
talent and good taste of one city in regard to this anni- 



HOLIDAYS. 157 

versary, and is a most pleasing historical memorial of 
the occasion, it cannot be denied that our usual syno- 
nyme for bombast and mere rhetorical patriotism is 
" a Fourth of July Oration," and that Pickwickian sen- 
timent, pyrotechnic flashes, torpedoes, arrests, bursting 
cannon, draggled flags, crowded steamboats, the retiracy 
of the educated, and the uproar of the multitude, make 
up the confused and wearisome details of what should 
and might be a sacred feast, a pious memory, a hal- 
lowed consecration, a " Sabbath-day of Freedom." 
Perhaps the real zest of this holiday is felt only abroad, 
when, under some remote consular flag, at the board of 
private and munificent hospitality in London, or at an 
American reunion in the French capital, distance from 
home, the ties of common nativity in a foreign land, and 
the contrast of uneducated masses or despotic insignia 
around, with the prosperous, free, and enlightened pop- 
ulation of our own favored country, to say nothing of 
superior festal arrangements, render the occasion at 
once charming and memorable. 

One of the most noticeable features of American life 
to a stranger's eye is the prevalent habit of travel, and, 
although the incessant and huge caravans that rush 
along the numerous railways which make an iron net- 
work over this Union, are, for the most part, impelled 
by motives of enterprise and thrift, yet the common 
idea of recreation is associated with a " trip." Whether 
the facilities or the temperament of our country, or 
both, be the reason of this locomotive propensity, it is 
a characteristic w^iich at once distinguishes the Ameri- 
can from the home-tethered German, the Paris-bound 
Frenchman, and the locally - patriotic Italian. The 
schoolboy in vacation, the college graduate, the bride- 



158 HOLIDAYS. 

groom, the overtasked professional man, — all Ameri- 
cans who give themselves a " holiday," are wont to 
dedicate it to a journey. But even this resource has 
lost much of its original charm from the catastro- 
phes which have associated some of the most beautiful 
scenery of the land with the most agonizing of human 
tragedies. In the crystal waters of Lake George, by 
the picturesque banks of the Hudson, amid the fertile 
valleys of the Connecticut, on the teeming currents of 
Long Island Sound, have perished, often through reck- 
less hardihood, always by more or less reprehensible 
negligence, some of the fairest and the noblest of our 
citizens. The statistics of these melancholy events 
which have so often appalled the public, have yet to be 
written ; but their moral effect may be divined by a 
mere glance at the mercenary hardihood and soulless 
haste that mark our civilization. " Les dangers person- 
nels," says an acute writer, "quand ils attegnent un 
certain limite, bouleversent tons les rapports et I'oublie 
de I'esperance change presque notre nature." The 
zest, too, of a journey in America is much diminished 
by the monotonous character of the people, and by the 
gregarious habits, the rapid transits, and the business 
motives of the voyageurs, so that it is only at the termi- 
nus that we enjoy our pilgrimage ; there the sight of a 
magnificent prairie or mountain range, cataract or mam- 
moth cave, may, indeed, vindicate our locomotive taste, 
and the wonders of Nature make for the imaginative 
and reverential, a glorious holiday. 

A pleasing feature in the recreative aspect of Ameri- 
can life is the literary festival. It is a beautiful custom 
of our scholars annually to meet amid the scenes of 
their academical education and renew youthful friend- 



HOLIDAYS. 159 

ships, while they listen to the orator and poet, who 
dwell upon those problems of the times which challenge 
an intellectual solution and identify the duties of the 
citizen with the offices of learning. "Within the memory 
of almost all, there is probably at least one of these 
occasions, when the interest of the performances or the 
circumstances of the hour, lent a memorable charm to 
the collegiate holiday ; when, under the shade of ven- 
erable elms, that witnessed the first outpouring of men- 
tal enthusiasm or the earliest honors of genius and at- 
tainment, they who parted as boys meet as men, and 
the classic dreamer felt himself a recognized and prac- 
tical thinker for the people ; when the language of elo- 
quent wisdom or poetic beauty came warm from lips 
hallowed by the chalice of fame. Who that listened 
ever can forget the anniversary graced by the chaste 
eloquence of Buckminster, that on which Bryant recited 
" The Ages," or Everett's musical periods welcomed 
Lafayette to the oldest seat of American learning? 
What New England scholar, after years of professional 
labor in a distant State, ever found himself, once more, 
within the charmed precincts of his alma mater, and 
surrounded by the companions of his youthful studies, 
without a thrill of happy reminiscence ? Yet even 
these rational opportunities for what should be a genu- 
ine holiday to mind and heart are but casually appre- 
ciated. The sultry period of their occurrence, the 
irregularity of attendance, and the precarious quality of 
the " feast of reason " provided, have caused them grad- 
ually to lose a tenacious hold upon the affections, while 
there are few habitues, the majority, especially those 
who live at a distance from the scene, and whose pres- 
ence is, therefore, especially desirable, — are not loyal 



160 HOLIDAYS. 

pilgrims to the shrine where their virgin distinction was 
earned and their intellectual armor forged. To many, 
our literary festivals are but technical ceremonies ; to 
not a few, wearisome forms; associated rather with fans, 
didactics, perspiration, and cold viands, than with any 
social or intellectual refreshment. The " lean annui- 
tant " who loved to visit " Oxford in vacation," and 
fancy himself a gownsman, and the ingenious " Opium 
Eater " who has recorded the enduring claims of those 
venerable cloisters to the scholar's gratitude, enjoyed 
speculatively more of the real luxury of academic 
repose and triumph than is often attained by those 
who ostensibly participate in our college festivals ; and 
seldom do her children go up to the altars of wisdom 
consecrated by the pious zeal of our ancestors, with 
the faithful recognition of the venerable pastor, so 
long the statistical oracle of the surviving graduates, 
who, while his strength sufficed, cheerily walked from 
his rural parish to Old Harvard, to lead off the anni- 
versary psalm, with genial pride and honest self-grat- 
ulation. 

Of our purely social holidays, New Year's Day, as 
observed in the city of New York, bears the palm. In- 
itiated by the hospitable instinct of the Dutch colonists, 
neither the heterogeneous poj^ulation which has suc- 
ceeded them, nor the annually enlarged circuit of the 
metropolis, has diminished the universality or the heart- 
iness of its observance. When the snow is massed in 
the thoroughfares, and the sunshine tempers a clear, 
frosty atmosphere, a more cheerful scene, on a large 
scale, it is impossible to imagine. From morning to 
midnight, sleighs, freighted with gay companions and 
dra^yn by handsome steeds, dash merrily along, — the 



HOLIDAYS. 161 

tinkle of their bells and the scarlet lining of their buf- 
falo-robes redolent of a fete ; the sidewalks are alive 
with hurrying pedestrians who exchange cordial greet- 
ings as they pass one another ; doors incessantly fly 
open ; guests come and go ; every one looks prosperous 
and happy ; business is totally suspended ; in warm 
parlors radiant with comfort or splendid with luxury, 
sit the wives, daughters, sisters, or fair favorites of 
these innumerable visitors, the queens of the day ; the 
neglects of the past are forgiven and forgotten 'in the 
w^elcome of the present ; kindred, friends, and acquaint- 
ances all meet and begin the year with mutual good 
wishes ; in every dwelling a little feast stands ready, en- 
compassed with smiles ; and all varieties of fortune, all 
degrees of intimacy, all tastes in dress, entertainment, 
and manners, on this one day, are consecrated by the 
liberal and kindly spirit of a social carnival. 

Of associations expressly instituted for the observance 
of holidays there is no lack ; of days technically de- 
voted to festivity, in the aggregate, our proportion 
equals that of older communities ; and the legitimate 
occasions for pastime and ceremony, social pleasure, or 
historical commemoration, are as numerous as is consist- 
ent with the industrious habits and the civic prosperity 
of the land. The traveller who should make it his 
speciality to discover and note the ostensible merry- 
makings and pageants of America would find the list 
neither brief nor monotonous. In the summer he would 
light upon many an excursion on our beautiful lakes, 
many a chowder-party to the seaside, and picnic in the 
grove ; and in the winter would catch the shrill echo of 
the skating frolic. Here, through pillared trunks, he 
would behold the smoke-wreaths of the sugar-camp j 
11 



162 HOLIDAYS. 

there watch laughing groups clustered round the cider- 
mill or hop-field ; and in woods radiant with autumnal 
tints, or prairies balmy with a million flowers, would 
sounds of merriment announce to him the cheerful biv- 
ouac. Nor have American holidays, even in their most 
primitive aspect, been devoid of use and beauty. The 
once renowned " musters " fostered military taste, and 
the cattle-shows encouraged agricultural science ; witn 
the increase of horticultural festivals, our fruits and 
flowers have constantly improved ; regattas and yacht- 
clubs have indirectly promoted nautical architecture ; 
school festivals attest the superiority of our system of 
popular educa:tion ; family gatherings, on the large scale 
observed in several instances, have induced genealogi- 
cal research ; historical celebrations have led to the col- 
lection and preservation of local archives and memori- 
als ; the Cincinnati Society annually renews the noblest 
patriotic sympathies ; and the genius for mechanical in- 
vention is proclaimed by the Fairs which, every Octo- 
ber, bring together so many trophies of skilful handi- 
work and husbandry, and recognize so emphatically the 
dignity and scientific amelioration of labor. Yet these 
facts do not invalidate the general truth that our festi- 
vals are too much tinctured with utilitarian aims to 
breathe earnestness and hilarity ; that they are so spe- 
cific as to represent the division rather than the social 
triumphs of human toil ; that they are too partial in 
their scope, too sectional in their objects, and too isola- 
ted in their arrangements to meet the claims of popular 
and permanent interests. Our harvests are songless. 
Reaping-machines have diminished the zest of autumn's 
golden largess, as destructive inventions have lessened 
the miracles of chivalry. Here and there may yet con- 



HOLIDAYS. 163 

vene a qiiil ting-party, but locomotive facilities have de- 
prived rural gatherings, in sparse neighborhoods, of 
their marvel and their joy ; and the hilarious huskings 
of old chiefly survive in Barlow's neglected verse : — 

" The days grow short; but though the fallen sun 
To the glad swain proclaims his day's work done; 
Night's pleasant shades his various tasks prolong, 
And yield new subjects to my various song. 
For now, the corn-house filled, the harvest home, 
The invited neighbors to the husking come; 
A frolic scene, where work and mirth and play, 
Unite their charms to chase the hours away. 
Where the huge heap lies centred in the hall, 
The lamp suspended from the cheeiful wall. 
Brown, corn-fed nymphs, and strong, hard-handed beaux, 
Alternate ranged, extend in circling rows. 
Assume their seats, the solid mass attack; 
The dry husks rustle, and the corn-cobs crack ; 
The song, the laugh, alternate notes resound. 
And the sweet cider trips in silence round. 
The laws of husking every wight can tell, 
And sure no laws he ever keeps so well : 
For each red ear a general kiss he gains, 
With each smut ear he smuts the luckless swains; 
But when to some sweet maid a prize is cast. 
Red as her lips and taper as her waist. 
She walks the round and culls one favored beau, 
Who leaps the luscious tribute to bestow. 
Various the sports, as are the wits and brains 
Of well-pleased lasses and contending swains; 
Till the vast mound of corn is swept away. 
And he that gets the last ear wins the day." 

Progress in taste and sentiment, however, is already 
obvious in our recreative arrangements. There is vastly 
more of intellectual dignity and permanent use in the 
fetes of the Lyceum than in those of the training-days 
and election-jubilees which formerly were the chief hol- 
idays of our rural population ; exhibitions of flowers 



164 HOLIDAYS. 

mark a notable advance upon the coarse diversions of 
the ring and the race-ground ; and, within a few years, 
statues by native artists, worthy of their illustrious sub- 
jects, have been inaugurated by public rites and noble 
eloquence. 

A radical cause of the inefficiency, and therefore of 
the indifferent observance of our holidays, may be found 
in our national inadequacy of expression, in the want 
of those modes of popular rejoicing and ceremonial 
that win and triumph, from their intrinsic beauty. As 
a general truth, it may be asserted that but two methods 
of representing holiday sentiment are native to the aver- 
age taste of our people, — military display and oral dis- 
course. These exhaust our festal resources. Our citi- 
zens have an extraordinary facility in making occasional 
speeches, and the love of soldiership is so prevalent 
that it is the favorite sport of children, and all classes 
indulge in costly uniforms and volunteer parades. But 
the language of art, which in the Old World lends such 
a permanent attraction to holidays, with us hardly finds 
voice. Had we requiems conceived with the eternal 
pathos of Mozart, harmonious embodiments of rural 
pastime, like that which Beethoven caught while sitting 
on a stile amid the subdued murmurs of a summer 
evening; melodious invocations to freedom, such as 
Bellini's thrilling duo ; were a symphony as readily 
composed in America as an oration ; tableaux, costumes, 
and processions as artistically invented here as in 
France ; were dance and song as spontaneously ex- 
pressive as among the European peasantry ; had we 
vast, open, magnificent temples, free gardens, statues 
to crown, shrines to frequent, palatial balconies, fields 
Elysian for both rich and poor, a sensibility to music, 



HOLIDA YS, 165 

and a sense of the appropriate and beautiful, as wide 
and as instinctive as our appreciation of the useful, the 
practical, and the comfortable, — it would no longer be 
requisite to resort exclusively to drums, fifes, powder, 
substantial viands, and speechifying, to give utterance 
to the common sentiment, which would find, vent in 
tones, forms, hues, combinations, and sympathies, that 
respond to the heart, through the imagination, and 
conform " the show of things to the desires of the 
mind." 

Other causes of our deficient holidays are obvious. 
The primary are to be found in the absorption in busi- 
ness and the dominion of practical habits, both of 
thought and action. Enterprise holds Carnival while 
Poetry keeps Lent. The facts of to-day shut out of 
view the perspective of time, or, at best, lure the gaze 
forward with boundless expectancy. To rehearse the 
fortunate achievements of the past gratifies our national 
egotism ; but the sensibility and meditation which con- 
secrate historical associations find no room amid the 
rush and eagerness of the passing hour. Content to 
point to the heroic episode of the Revolution, to the 
wisdom and justice of our Constitution, to the caravang 
that sweep on iron tracks over leagues of what a few 
years ago was a pathless forest, — to the swiftest keels 
and most graceful models that traverse the ocean, — 
to the aerial viaducts that span dizzy heights and im- 
petuous torrents, — to the exquisite vignettes of a limit- 
less paper currency, — to the dignified and consistent 
maintenance of usurped law in younger States of the 
Union, and to the continually increasing resources of 
its older members ; we are disposed to sneer at the 
childish love of amusement which beguiles the inhabi- 



166 HOLIDAYS. 

tants of European capitals, and to pity the superstition 
and idleness which retain, in this enlightened age, the 
melodramatic church shows of Romanism. In all this 
there is doubtless a certain manly intelligence ; but 
there is also an inauspicious moral hardihood. If, as a 
people, we cultivated more heartily the social instincts 
and humane sentiments expressed in holiday rites, life 
would be more valued, the whole nature would find con- 
genial play, and our taskwork and duty, our citizenship 
and our natural advantages, would be adorned by grace- 
fulness, alacrity, and repose. Quantity would not be so 
grossly estimated above quality, speed above security, 
routine above enjoyment. We need to win from time 
what is denied to us in material. Other nations have 
in Art a permanent and accessible refreshment, which 
prevents life from being wholly prosaic ; the humblest 
dweller on English soil can enter a time-hallowed and 
beautiful cathedral ; the poorest rustic in Italy can feel 
the honest pride of a distinctive festal attire ; the veriest 
clodhopper in Germany can soften the rigors of poverty 
by music ; the London apprentice may wander once a 
week amid the venerable beauties of Hampton Court ; 
and the Parisian shopkeeper may kindle pride of coun- 
try by reading the pictorial history of France at Ver- 
sailles. It is not the expensive arrangements, but the 
national provision, and, above all, the personal senti- 
ment, which makes the holiday. There was more holy 
rapture in the low cadence of the hymn stealing from 
the Roman Catacombs, where the hunted Christians of 
old kept holy the Sabbath-day, than there is in the gor- 
geous display and complex melody under the magnifi- 
cent dome of St. Peter's. There was more of the grace 
of festivity in such a dance as poor Goldsmith's flute 



HOLIDAYS. 167 

enlivened on the banks of the Loire, than there is in 
the grand ball which marks the season's climax at an 
American watering-place. In public not less than pri- 
vate banquets, the scriptural maxim holds true : " Bet- 
ter is a dinner of herbs where love is.'" Our national 
life is too diffusive to yield the best social fruits. The 
extent of territory, the nomadic habits of our people, 
the alternations of climate, the vicissitudes of trade, the 
prevalence of spasmodic and superficial excitements, 
the boundless passion for gain, the local changes, the 
family separations, and the incessant fevers of opinion, 
scatter the holy fire of love, reverence, self-respect, 
contemplation, and faith. What a senseless boast, that 
the United States has thirty-five thousand miles of 
railroad,^ while England claims but ninety-two hundred, 
France forty-eight hundred, if, against the American 
overplus are to be arrayed countless hetacombs of 
murdered fellow-citizens, and desolating frauds unpar- 
alleled in the history of finance! What a mockery 
the distinction of having accumulated a fortune in a 
few years, by sagacity and toil, if, to complete the rec- 
ord, it is added that mercenary ambition risked and 
lost it in as many months, or the want of self-control, 
and mental resources made its possession a life-long 
curse from ennui or tasteless extravagance ! It is as 
a check to the whirl of inconsiderate speculation, an 
antidote to the bane of material luxury, an interval in 
the hurried march of executive life, that holidays should 
" give us pause," and might prove a means of refine- 
ment and of disinterestedness. We could thus infuse 
a better spirit into our work-day experience, refresh 
and warm the nation's heart, and gradually concentrate 
what of higher taste and more genial sympathy under- 
* In 1860. 



168 HOLIDAYS. 

lies the restless and cold tide that hurries us onward, 
unmindful of the beauty and indifferent to the sancti- 
ties with which God and Nature have invested our ex- 
istence. 

Of natal anniversaries we have in our national calen- 
dar one which it would augur well for the Republic to 
observe as a universal holiday. Every sentiuient of 
gratitude, veneration, and patriotism has already conse- 
crated it to the private heart, and every consideration 
of unity, good faith, and American feeling, designates 
its celebration as the most sacred cWicfete of the land. 
Recent demonstrations in literature, art, and oratory, 
indicate that the obligation and importance of keejDing 
before the eyes, minds, and affections of the people the 
memory of Washington, are emphatically recognized 
by genius and popular sentiment. Within a few years, 
the pen of our most endeared author, the eloquence of 
our most finished orator, and the chisel of our best 
sculptors, have combined to exhibit, in the most authen- 
tic and impressive forms of literary and plastic art, the 
character and image of the Father of his Country. 
Copies of Stuart's masterly portrait have multiplied. A 
monument bearing the revered name is slowly rising at 
the Capital, the materials of which are gathered from 
every part of the globe. One of the last and most "noble 
efforts to renew the waning national sentiment ere its 
lapse brought on civil war, was that of a New England 
scholar, patriot, and orator who, despite the allurements 
of prosperity and the claims of age and long service, 
traversed the length and breadth of the Republic, elo- 
quently expatiating on the character of Washington, 
retracing his spotless and great career and evoking his 
sacred memory as a talisman to quicken and combine a 



HOLIDAYS. 169 

people's love. With the large contributions thus secured, 
and those gathered by the daughters of the Repub-' 
lie, the home and grave of Washington has been re- 
deemed as national property. Let the first homage of 
a free people be paid at that shrine ; and alienated fel- 
low-citizens gather there as at a common altar : his tomb 
is thus doubly hallowed. In Virginia is a sculptured 
memorial of enduring beauty and historical significance. 
A new and admirable biography, with all the elements 
of standard popularity, makes his peerless career familiar 
to every citizen from the woods of Maine to the shores 
of the Pacific. One effective statue already ornaments 
the commercial emporium, and another is about to be 
erected in the city of Boston. These, and many other 
signs of the times, prove that the fanaticism of party 
strife has awakened the wise and loyal to a conscious- 
ness of the inestimable value of that great example and 
canonized name, as a bond of union, a conciliating mem- 
ory, and a glorious watchword. Desecrated as has been 
his native State by rebels against the government he 
founded and the nation he inaugurated, profaned as has 
been his memory, now that Peace smiles upon the land 
his august image will reappear to every true, loyal and 
patriotic heart with renewed authority, and hallowed by 
a deeper love. The present, therefore, is a favorable mo- 
ment to institute the birthday of Washington,— hitherto 
but partially and ineffectually honored — as a solemn 
National Festival. Around his tomb let us annually 
gather; let eloquence and song, leisure and remem- 
brance, trophies of art, ceremonies of piety, and sen- 
timents of gratitude and admiration, consecrate that 
day with an unanimity of feeling and of rites, which 
shall fuse and mould into one pervasive emotion, the 



170 



HOLIDAYS. 



divided hearts of the country, until the discordant cries 
of faction are lost in the anthems of benediction and 
of love; and, before the august spirit of a people's 
homage, sectional animosity is awed into universal 
reverence. 






LAWYERS. 

" To vindicate the majesty of the law." — Judge's Charge. 

"Why may not this "be a lawyer's skull' Why does he suffer this rude 
knave to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him 
of his action for battery ? " — Hamlet. 

HE miniature effigy of a town-crier, with a little 
placard on his bell, inscribed '■^Lost — a Law- 
yer's conscience 1 " was a favorite toy for chil- 
dren not many years ago ; and, about the same time, a 
song was in vogue, warbled by a whole generation of 
young misses, " all about the L-A-W," in which that 
venerable profession was made the subject of a warning 
chant, whose dolorous refrain, doubtless, yet lingers in 
many an ear. Thus early is law associated with uncer- 
tainty and shamelessness ; Messrs. Roe and Doe become 
the most dreaded of apocryphal characters ; red-tape 
the clew of an endless labyrinth ; Justice Shallow, with 
all his imbecility, a dangerous personage, and human 
beings, even a friend, transformed by the mysterious 
perspective of this anomalous element to a "party." 
The most popular of modern novehsts have found these 
associations sufficiently universal to yield good material 
in " dead suitors broken, heart and soul, on the wheel 
of chancery ; " and Elite, Gridley, and Rick, are fresh 
and permanent scarecrows in the harvest-field of the 
law. 

From the Mosaic code, enrolled on tables of stone, to 
the convention which inaugurated that of the modern 



172 LAWYERS. 

conqueror of EiiroiDe, law has been a field for the no- 
blest triumphs and most gross perversions of the human 
intellect No profession offers such extremes of glory 
and shame. From the most wretched sophistry to the 
grandest inference, from a quibble to a principle, from 
the august minister of justice to the low pettifogger, 
how great the distance ; yet all are included within a 
common pale. 

In every social circle and family group, there is an 
oracle — some individual whose age, wit, or force of 
character, gives an intellectual ascendency — and there 
are always Bunsbys to " give an opinion " among the 
ignorant, to which the others spontaneously defer ; and 
thus instinctively arises the lawgiver, sometimes ruling 
with the rude dogmatism of Dr. Jolinson, and at others, 
through the humorous good sense of Sydney Smith, or 
the endearing tact of Madame Recamier. These au- 
thorities, in the sphere of oj)inion and companionship, 
indicate how natural to human society is a recognized 
head, whence emanates that controlling influence to 
which we give the name of law. Like every other ele- 
ment of life, this loses somewhat of its native beauty, 
when organized and made professional. To every vo- 
cation there belong master-spirits who have established 
precedents, and there are natural lawgivers ; as in art, 
Michael Angelo and Raphael ; in oratory, Demosthenes ; 
in philosophy. Bacon. The endowments of each not 
only justify, but originate their authority ; they interpret 
truth through their superior insight and wisdom in their 
respective departments of action and of thought; but 
of the vast number who undertake to illustrate, main- 
tain, or apply the laws which govern States, a small 
minority are gifted for the task, or aspire to its higher 



LAWYERS. 173 

functions ; hence the proverbial abuse of the profession, 
its few glorious ornaments, and its herd of perverted 
slaves. 

From this primary condition, it is impossible for any- 
human being to escape ; if he goes into the desert, he 
is still subject to the laws of Nature, and, however 
retired he may live amid his race, the laws of society 
press upon him at some point ; if his own opinion is his 
law in matters of fancy or politics, he must still obey 
the law of the road : in one country the law of primo- 
geniture ; in another, that of conscription ; in one cir- 
cle, a law of taste ; in another, of custom ; and in a third, 
of privilege, reacts upon his free agency ; at his club is 
sumptuary law ; over his game of whist, Hoyle ; in his 
drawing-room, Chesterfield ; now Vesprit du corps ; and 
again, the claims of rank ; in Maine, the liquor law; in 
California, lynch law ; in Paris, a gens d'armes ; at 
Rome, a permission of residence ; on an English do- 
main, the game laws ; in the fields of Connecticut, a 
pound ; everywhere turnpikes, sheriffs' sales, marriage 
certificates, prisons, courts, passports, and policemen, 
thrust before the eyes of the most peaceable and re- 
served cosmopolite — insignia that assure him that law 
is everywhere unavoidable. His physician discourses to 
him of the laws of health ; his military friends, of tac- 
tics ; the beaux, of etiquette ; the belles, of la mode ; 
the authors, of tasteful precedents ; the reformer, of 
social systems ; and thus all recognize and yield to some 
code. 

If he have nothing to bequeath, no tax to pay, no 
creditor to sue, or libeller to prosecute, he yet must walk 
the streets, and thereby realize the influence or neglect 
of municipal law in the enjoyment of " right of way," 



174 LAWYERS. 

or the nausea from some neglected ofFal ; the accidents 
incident to travel in this country assure him of the 
slight tenure of corporate resjDonsibility under republi- 
can law ; and the facility of divorce, the removal of old 
landmarks, the incessant subdivision and dispersion of 
estates, indicate that devotion to the immediate which 
a French philosopher ascribes to free institutions, and 
which affects legal as well as social phenomena. In a 
tour abroad, he discovers new majesty in the ruins of 
the Forum, from their association with the ancient Ro- 
man law, upon which modern jurisprudence is founded ; 
and a curious interest attaches to the picturesque beauty 
of Amalfi, because the Pandects were there discovered. 
Westminster revives the tragic memories of the State 
trials, and seems yet to echo the Oriental rhetoric that 
made the trial of Hastings a Parliamentary romance. 
At Bologna, amid the old drooping towers, under the 
pensive arcades, in the radiant silence of the picture- 
gallery, comes back the traditionary beauty of the fair 
lecturer, who taught the students juridical lore from be- 
hind a curtain, that her loveliness might not bewilder 
the minds her words informed; and at Venice every 
dark-robed, graceful figure that glides by the porticos 
of San Marco's moonlit square, revives the noble Por- 
tia's image, and that " same scrubbed boy, the doctor's 
clerk." 

No inconsiderable legal knowledge has been traced 
in Shakspeare. His Justice Shallow and Dogberry 
are types of imbecile magistracy ; in the historical plays, 
the law of legitimacy is defined ; and not a little judi- 
cial lore is embodied in the " Merchant of Venice " and 
" Taming the Shrew." Lord Campbell wrote a book to 
prove that Shakspeare, in his youth, must have been, at 



LAWYERS. 175 

least, an attorney's clerk. One of the characters in a 
popular novel is made to say that he is never in com- 
pany with a lawyer but he fancies himself in a witness- 
box. This hit at the interrogative propensity of the 
class is by no means an exaggerated view of a use to 
which they are specially inclined to put conversation ; 
and, if we compare the ordeal of inquiry to which we 
are thus subjected, it will be found more thorough, and 
better fitted to test our knowledge than that of any 
other social catechism ; so that, perhaps, we gain in dis- 
cipline what we lose in patience. It is to be acknowl- 
edged, also, that few men are better stocked with ideas, 
or more fluent in imparting them, than well-educated 
lawyers. There is often a singular zest in their anec- 
dotes, a precision in their statement of facts, and a dra- 
matic style of narrative, which render them the pleas- 
antest of companions. In all clever coteries of which 
we have any genial record, there usually figures a law- 
yer, as a wit, a boon companion, an entertaining dog- 
matist, or an intellectual champion. In literature, the 
claims and demerits of the profession are emphatically 
recognized ; and it is curious to note the varied infer- 
ences of philosophers and authors. Thus, Dr. Johnson 
says to Boswell : " Sir, a lawyer has no business with 
the justice or injustice of the cause he undertakes ; " 
and "everybody knows you are paid for affecting a 
warmth for your client." "Justice," observes Sydney 
Smith, " is found, experimentally, to be best promoted 
by the opposite efforts of practiced and ingenious men, 
presenting to an impartial judge the best argument for 
the establishment and explanation of truth." " Some 
are allured to the trade of law," says Milton, " by litig- 
iousness and fat fees ; " one authoritative writer describes 



176 LAWYERS. 

a lawyer as a man whose understanding is on the town ; 
another declares no man departs more from justice ; 
Sancho Panza said his master would prattle more than 
three attorneys ; and Coleridge thought that, " upon the 
whole, the advocate is placed in a position unfavorable 
to his moral being, and, indeed, to his intellect also, in 
its higher powers ; " while it was a maxim of Wilkes, 
that scoundrel and lawyer are synonymous terms. Our 
pioneer litterateur, Brockden Brown, whose imaginative 
mind revolted at the dry formalities of the law, for 
which he was originally intended, defined it as " a tis- 
sue of shreds and remnants of a barbarous antiquity, 
patched by the stupidity of modern workmen into new 
deformity." " In the study of law," remarks the poet 
Gray, "the labor is long, and the elements dry and 
uninteresting, nor was there ever any one not disgusted 
at the beginning."' Foote, the comic writer and actor, 
feigned surprise to a farmer that attorneys were buried, 
in the country, like other men ; in town, he declared, it 
was the custom to place the body in a chamber, with an 
open window, and it was sure to disappear during the 
night, leaving a smell of brimstone. A portrait-painter 
assures us he is never mistaken in a lawyer's face ; the 
avocation is betrayed to his observant eye by a cer- 
tain mscrutahle expression ; and Dickens has given this 
not exaggerated picture of a class in the profession : 
" Smoke-dried and faded, dwelling among mankind, but 
not consorting with them, aged without experience of 
genial youth, and so long used to make his cramped 
nest in holes and corners of human nature that he has 
forgotten its broader and better range." 

A French writer defines a lawyer as " un marchand 
de phrases, un fabricant de paradoxes, qui ment pour 



LAWYERS. 177 

r argent et vend ses paroles " ; and another remarks of 
the profession that it is a " vaste champ, ouvert aux am- 
bitions des honnetes ; une tribune ofFerte aux subtiUtes 
de la pensee et 1' abus de la parole ; " while Arthur 
Helps declares that, " Law affords a notable example of 
loss of time, of heart, of love, of leisure. I observe," 
he adds, " that the first Spanish colonists in America 
wrote home to Government, begging them not to allow 
lawyers to come to the colony." '* On the other hand, 
what an eloquent tribute to the possible actual benefi- 
cence of law is the close of Lord Brougham's memor- 
able speech in its defence : — 

•' You saw the greatest warrior of the age, — conqueror of 
Italy, humbler of Germany, terror of the North, — saw him 
account all his matchless victories poor, compared with the tri- 
umph you are now in a condition to win, — saw him contemn 
the fickleness of Fortune, while in despite of her he could pro- 
nounce his memorable boast, ' I shall go down to posterity with 
the Code in my hand ! ' You have vanquished him in the field ; 
strive now to rival him in the sacred arts of peace. Outstrip 
him as a lawgiver whom in arms you overcame. The lustre 
of the Regency will be eclipsed by the more solid and endur- 
ing splendor of the Reign. It was the boast of Augustus — it 
formed part of the glare in which the perfidies of his earlier 
years were lost — that he found Rome of brick, and left it of 
marble. But how much nobler will be the Sovereign's boast, 
when he shall have it to say, that he found law dear and left 
it cheap ; found it a sealed book, left it a living letter ; found 
it the patrimony of the rich, left it the inheritance of the 
poor ; found it the two-edged sword of craft and oppression, 
lefl it the staff of honesty and the shield of innocence ! " 

" Why may not this be a lawyer's skull ? " muses 
Hamlet, in the graveyard ; " where be his quiddets now, 

* Friends in Council. 
12 



178 LAWYERS. 

his quillets, bis cases, his tenures, and his tricks? 
Humph ! this fellow might be in 's time a greater buyer 
of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, 
his double-vouchers, his recoveries ; and this, the fine 
of his fines, and the recovery of his recoveries, to have 
his fine poll full of dirt ! The very conveyances of his 
lands will hardly lie in this box ; and must the inheritor 
himself have no more ? " 

The diversities of the profession in England and 
America are curious and suggestive. Already is the 
obligation mutual ; for if in the old country there are 
more profound and elaborate resources, in the new the 
science has received brilliant elucidations, and its forms 
and processes been simplified. There routine is apt to 
dwarf, and here variety to dissipate the lawyer's ability ; 
there he is too often a mere drudge, and here his vo- 
cation regarded as the vestibule only of political life. 
In England, the advocate's knowledge is frequently lim- 
ited to his special department ; and in America, while 
it is less complete and accurate, he is versed in many 
other subjects, and apt at many vocations. " The Amer- 
icans," says Sidney vSmith, " are the first persons who 
have discarded, in the administration of justice, the 
tailor, and his auxiliary the barber, — two persons of 
endless importance in the codes and pandects of Europe. 
A judge administers justice without a calorific wig and 
parti-colored gown ; — in a coat and pantaloons ; he is 
obeyed, however, and life and property are not badly 
protected in the United States." 

There can be no more striking contrast than that 
between the lives of the English chancellors and the 
American chief justices : in the former, regal splendor, 
the vicissitudes of kingcraft and succession, of religious 



LA WYERS. 179 

transition, of courts, war, the people and the nobility, 
lend a kind of feudal splendor, or tragic interest, or 
deep intrigue, to the career of the minister of justice ; 
he is surrounded with the insignia of his office; big 
wigs, scarlet robes, ermine mantles, the great seal, in- 
terviews with royalty, the trapjoings and the awe of 
power invest his person ; his career is identified with 
the national annals ; the lapse of time and historic asso- 
ciations lend a mysterious interest to his name ; in the 
background, there is the martyrdom of Thomas a 
Becket, the speech of the fallen Wolsey, the scaffold 
of Sir Thomas More, the inductive system and low am- 
bition of Bacon, and the literary fame of Clarendon. 
Yet, in intellectual dignity, our young republic need not 
shrink from the comparison. The Virginia stripling, 
who drilled regulars in a hunting-shirt, is a high legal 
authority in both hemispheres. " Where," says one of 
Marshall's intelligent eulogists, " in English history, is 
the judge whose mind was at once so enlarged and so 
systematic ; who had so thoroughly reduced professional 
science to general reason ; in whose disciplined intellect 
technical learning had so completely passed into native 
sense ? " And now that Kent's Commentaries have 
become the indispensable guide and reference of the 
entire profession, who remembers, except with pride, 
that, on his first circuit, the Court was often held in a 
barn, with the hay-loft for a bench, a stall for a bar, and 
the shade of a neighboring apple-tree for a jury-room ? 
The majesty of justice, the intellectual superiority of law 
as a pursuit, is herein most evident ; disrobed of all ex- 
ternal magnificence, with no lofty and venerable halls, 
imposing costume, or array of officials, the law yet bor- 
rows from the learning, the fidelity, and the genius of 



180 LAWYERS. 

its votaries, essential dignity and memorable trimnphs. 
"• Of law, no less can be said," grandly observes Hooker, 
" than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the 
harmony of the world." 

The most celebrated English lawyers have their 
American prototypes; thus, Marshall has been com- 
pared to Lord Mansfield, Pinkney to Erskine, and Wirt 
to Sheridan (who was a student of the Middle Temple, 
though not called to the bar) ; imperfect as are such 
analogies, they yet indicate, with truth, a similarity of 
endowment, or style of advocacy. The diverse influ- 
ence of the respective institutions of the two countries 
is, however, none the less apparent because of an occa- 
sional resemblance in the genius of eminent barristers. 
The genuine British lawyer is recognized by the tech- 
nical cast of his expression and habit of mind, to a de- 
gree seldom obvious in this country. Indeed, no small 
portion of the graduates of our colleges who select the 
law as a pursuit, do so without any strong bias for the 
profession, but with a view to the facilities it affords for 
entrance into public life. Some of these aspirants thus 
become useful servants of the State ; a few, statesmen, 
but the majority mere politicians ; and from the predom- 
inance of the latter class originate half the errors of 
American legislation ; for, however much profound legal 
training may fit a man of ability for the higher func- 
tions of representative government, a superficial knowl- 
edge and practice of law renders him only an adept in 
chicanery and the " gift of the gab " ; and it is easy to 
imagine how a mob of such adroit and ambitious parti- 
sans — especially when brought together from the nar- 
row sphere of village life — may pervert the great ends 
of legislative action. They make the laws according to 



LAWYERS. 181 

their own interests ; and there is no prospect of the ref- 
ormation demanded in juridical practice, while such a 
corps form the speaking and voting majority, and act 
on what has been justly called the one great principle 
of English law, — " to make business for itself J' * 

Two names appear on the roll of English lawyers 
which are identified with the worst characteristics of the 
race, — impious, wild, and brow-beating arrogance, — 
that of Jeffreys, whose ferocious persecution of those 
suspected of complicity with Monmouth's Rebellion 
forms one of the most scandalous chapters in the his- 
tory of British courts ; and Lord Thurlow, who, in a 
more refined age, won the alias of Tiger, for his rude- 
ness, inflexibility, oaths, and ill - manners, his black 
brows, and audible growls. In beautiful contrast shine 
forth the Law Reformers of England, whose benign 
eloquence and unwearied labor mitigated the sangui- 
nary rigors of the criminal code, and pressed the Com- 
mon Law into the service of humanity. Romilly and 
Erskine have gained a renown more enduring than 
that of learned and gifted advocates ; their professional 
glory is heightened and mellowed by the sacred cause 
it illustrates. 

The trial by jury and habeas corpus are the grand 
privileges of England and our own country ; the integ- 
rity of the former has been invaded among us, by the 
abuse incident to making judgeships elective, and by 
the lawless spirit of the western communities ; while the 
conviction of such eminent criminals as Earl Ferrers, 

*" By the working of the apparatus for the administration of jus- 
tice, they make their profits ; and their Avelfare depends on its being so 
worked as to bring them profits, rather than on its being so worked as 
to administer justice." — Herbert Spencer. 



182 LA WYEKS. 

Dr. Dodd, and Faimtleroy, prove how it has been, and 
is respected by the public sentiment of England. 

" The great expense of the simplest lawsuit," writes 
an English lawyer, in a popular magazine, " and the 
droll laws which force all English subjects into a court 
of Equity for their sole redress, in an immense number 
of cases, lead, at this present day, to a very entertaining 
class of practical jokes. I mean that ludicrous class, 
in which the joke consists of a man's taking and keep- 
ing possession of money or other property to which he 
even pretends to have no shadow of right, but which he 
seizes because he knows that the whole will be swal- 
lowed up if the rightful owner should seek to assert his 
claim." The instances which are cited are rather fitted 
to excite a sense of humiliation than of fun, at the cruel 
injustice of a legal system which expressly organizes 
and protects robbery. 

The legal treatises produced in England in modern 
times, are wonderful monuments of erudition, research, 
and analytical power. The intelligent lawyer who ex- 
amines Spence's two volumes on Equity, does not won- 
der his brain gave way when thus far advanced on his 
gigantic task. It is this patient study, this complete 
learning, which distinguishes the English lawyer; in 
point of eloquence, he is confessedly inferior to his 
Irish and American brethren, as they are to him in 
profundity ; in the careful and persistent application of 
common sense to the hoarded legal acquisitions of cen- 
turies, the great minds of the English bar stand unri- 
valled. It is, indeed, the most certain professional ave- 
nue to official power. " Rely upon it," says a brilliant 
novelist, " the barrister's gown is the wedding-garment 
to the British feast of fat things ; " and Veron declares 



LAWYERS. 183 

that '' en France, mais en France seulement, un avocat 
est propre a tout, tandis qu'un medecin n'est juge propre 
a rien qu'a lianter les hopitaux." 

In this country, the lawyers of each State have a char- 
acteristic reputation ; the Bar of Boston, as a whole, is 
more English, that of the South more Irish, in its gen- 
eral merits. Marshall was an exception to the eloquent 
fame of American lawyers horn and bred south of the 
Potomac ; his superiority was logical : " aim exclusively 
at strength," was his maxim ; and " close, compact, sim- 
ple, but irresistible logic," his great distinction. Whea- 
ton's labors in behalf of International, and Hamilton's in 
that of Constitutional law, have laid the civilized world, 
as well as their native country, under high and lasting 
obligations. 

The popular estimate of a profession is dependent 
on circumstances ; and this, like every other human 
pursuit, takes its range and tone from the character of 
its votary, and the existent relation it holds to public 
sentiment ; not so much from what it technically de- 
mands, but from the spirit in which it is followed, comes 
the dignity and the shame of the law. The erudite 
generalizations of Savigny belong to the most difficult 
and enlarged sphere of thought, while the cunning ter- 
giversations of the legal adventurer identify him with 
sharpers and roguery. How characteristic of Aaron 
Burr, that he should sarcastically define law as " what- 
ever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained." In 
the first cycle of our Republic, when a liberal education 
was rare, the best lawyers were ornaments of society, 
and the intellectual benefactors of the country. In that 
study were disciplined the chivalrous minds of Mar- 
shall, Hamilton, Adams, Morris, and other statesmen of 



184 LA WYERS. 

the Revolution. A trial, which afforded the least scope 
for their remarkable powers, was attended by the intelli- 
gent citizens with very much the same kind of interest 
as filled the Athenian theatre — a mental banquet was 
confidently expected and deeply enjoyed. To have a 
great legal reputation, then, implied all that is noble in 
intellect, graceful in manner, and courteous in spirit — it 
besj^oke the scholar, the gentleman, and the wit, as well 
as the advocate. When Emmet came hither with the 
prestige of inherited patriotism and talents, as well as 
the claims of an exile, he found men at the bar whose 
eloquence rivalled the fame of Curran and Grattan. 

In Scotland, lawyers are eminently identified with 
social distinction and arrangements. " The fact of the 
substitution of the legal profession for the old Scottish 
aristocracy," says a late Review, "in the chief place in 
Edinburgh society, is typified by the circumstance that 
the so-called Parliament House, which is on the site of 
the ancient hall where the Estates of the Kingdom sat 
when the nation made its own laws, is now the seat of 
the Scottish law-courts and the daily resort of the inter- 
preters of the land. The general hour of breakfast in 
Edinburgh is determined by the time when the Courts 
open in the morning ; and dispersed through their homes 
or at dinner-parties in the evening it is the members 
of the legal profession that lead the social talk." 

The equality of free institutions was never more aj^tly 
illustrated than by a scene which occurred in a Court- 
House we used to frequent, in boyhood, in order to hear 
the impassioned rhetoric of a gifted criminal lawyer. 
A trial of peculiar interest was to come on ; the room 
was crowded with spectators and. officials ; the judge, a 
venerable specimen of the stern and dignified magis- 



LAWYERS. 185 

trate, took his seat ; the sheriff announced the opening 
of the court, and the clerk called over the names of 
those sumnioned to act as jurors. We were startled to 
hear, among those of grocers, draymen, and mechanics, 
the well-known name of an aristocratic millionaire. It 
was thrice repeated and no answer given. " Has that 
juror been duly summoned," inquired the judge. " Yes, 
your honor," was the reply. " Let two constables in- 
stantly bring him before us," said the magistrate. One 
can imagine the vexation of the rich gentleman of leis- 
ure, when dawdling, in a flowered i^obe de chamhre, 
over his sumptuous breakfast, to be disturbed by those 
rude minions of the law ; however, there was no alter- 
native, and he was obliged to dispatch his meal and 
accompany the distasteful escort. He entered the court, 
where a deep silence prevailed, Avith a supercilious smile 
and complacent air of well-bred annoyance. " How 
dare you keep the court waiting, sir ? " was the indig- 
nant salutation of the judge, who, perhaps, when last in 
the gentleman's company, had sipped a glass of delect- 
able old Madeira to his health. " I intended to pay my 
fine and not serve," stammered the millionaire. " And 
do you suppose, sir, that wealth exonerates you from the 
duties of a citizen, and is any apology for your gross 
incivility in thus detaining the court for over an hour ? 
No excuse will be accepted ; either take your seat in 
the jury-box or stand committed." Through the silent 
crowd, the luxurious man of fortune threaded his way, 
and sat down between a currier and wood-merchant, 
with whom he had to listen to the law and the evidence 
for a fortnight. 

The author of the " Lives of the English Chancel- 
lors " refers to the usual explanation of the origin of 



186 LA WYERS. 

the term "wool-sack," as intended in compliment to 
the staple product of the realm ; and adds his own 
belief that, in " the rude simplicity of early times, a 
sack of wool was frequently used as a sofa." In the 
colonial era of our history, when ceremony and etiquette 
ruled the public hall as well as the private drawing- 
room, American judges wore the robe and wig still 
used in the Old Country. These insignia of authority 
inspired an awe, before the era of legal reform and of 
philosophical jurisprudence, which comported with the 
tyrannous exercise of juridical power, when it was little 
more than the medium of despotism, and when the 
calm reproach of Stafford was a literal truth : " It is 
better to be without laws altogether, than to persuade 
ourselves that we have laws by which to regulate our 
conduct, and to find that they consist only in the enmity 
and arbitrary will of our accusers." 

The Conveyancer, Writer to the Signet, Attorney, 
Barrister, and other divisions of the legal profession, 
indicate how,, in this, as in other vocations, the divi- 
sion of labor operates in England ; while on this side 
of the v/ater, the contrary principle not only assigns to 
the lawyer a degree of knowledge and aptitude in each 
branch of his calling, but lays him under contribution 
in every political and social exigency, as an interpreter 
or advocate of public sentiment ; hence his remarkable 
versatility and comparatively superficial attainments. 
In the history of English law, the early struggles and 
profound acquirements of her disciples form the salient 
points, while in that of America, they are to be found 
rather in the primitive resources of justice and the 
varied career of her ministers. With regard to the 
former, our many racy descriptions of the process of 



LAWYERS. 187 

Western colonization, abound in remarkable anecdotes 
of the unlicensed administration of justice. After the 
Pioneer comes the Ranger, a kind of border police, 
then the Regulator, and finally the Justice of the Peace. 
In the primitive communities, when a flagrant wrong is 
committed, a public meeting is called, perhaps, under 
an oak-clump, or in a green hollow, the oldest settler is 
invited to the chair, which is probably the trunk of a 
fallen tree ; the offence is discussed ; the offender iden- 
tified ; volunteers scour the woods ; he is arraigned, 
and, if found guilty, hung, banished, or reprimanded, 
as the case may be, with a dispatch which is not less 
remarkable than the fair hearing he is allowed, and the 
cool decision with which he is condemned. 

There is a peculiar kind of impudence exhibited by 
the lawyer — it is sometimes called " badgering a wit- 
ness " — and consists essentially of a mean abuse of 
that power which is legally vested in judge and advo- 
cate, whereby they can, at pleasure, insult and torment 
each other, and all exposed to their queries, with impu- 
nity. It is easy to imagine the relish with which un- 
professional victims behold the mutual exercise of this 
legal tyranny. A venerable Justice, in one of our cities, 
was remarkable for the frequent reproofs he adminis- 
tered to young practitioners in his court, and the formal 
harangues with which he wore out the patience of those 
so unfortunate as to give testimony in his presence. On 
one occasion, it happened that he was summoned as a 
witness, in a case to be defended by one of the juvenile 
members of the bar, whom he had often called to order, 
with needless severity. This hopeful limb of the law 
was gifted with more than a connnon share of the cool 
assurance so requisite in the profession, and determined 



188 LA WYERS. 

to improve the opportunity, to make his " learned 
friend" of the bench feel the sting he had so often 
inflicted. Accordingly, when his Honor took the stand, 
the counsel gravely inquired his name, occupation, place 
of residence, and sundry other facts of his personal his- 
tory — though all were as familiar to himself and every 
one present as the old church, or main street of their 
native town. The queries were put in a voice and with 
a manner so exactly imitated from that of the judge 
hiuiself, as to convulse the audience with laughter ; 
every unnecessary word the hampered witness used was 
reprimanded as " beyond the question ; " he was con- 
tinually adjured to "tell the truth, the whole truth, and 
nothing but the truth ; " his expressions were captiously 
objected to ; he was tantalized with repetitions and 
cross-questioning about the veriest trifles ; and, finally, 
his tormentor, with a face of the utmost gravity, pre- 
tended to discover in the witness a levity of bearing, 
and equivocal replies, which called for a lecture on " the 
responsibility of an oath ; " this was delivered with a 
pedantic solemnity, in words, accent, and gesture, so 
like one of his own addresses from the bench, that 
judge, jury, and spectators, burst forth into irresistible 
peals of laughter ; and the subject of this clever retali- 
ation lost all self-possession, grew red and pale by turns, 
fumed, and at last protested, until his young adversary 
wound up the farce, by a threat to commit him for con- 
tempt of court. 

When Chief Justice Coleridge retired from the bench, 
his farewell address deeply affected the members of the 
bar present : " These are not your severest trials," said 
he, referring to the more familiar difficulties of the 
profession ; " they are those which are most insidious ; 



LAWYERS. 189 

which beset you in the ordinary path of yonr daily duty ; 
those which spring from the excitement of contest, 
from the love of intellectual display, and even from 
an exaggerated sense of duty to your clients. Gentle- 
men, — especially my younger friends, — suffer me, 
without offence, to put you on your guard against 
these. We can well afford to bear traditional pleasant- 
ries upon us from without, but we cannot afford that, 
underlying these, there should exist among thoughtful 
persons a feeling that our professional standard of 
honor is questionable, — that we, as advocates, will say 
and do in court what we, as gentlemen, would scorn to 
do in the common walks of life. Sometimes, I confess, 
it seems to me that we lend support to such a feeling 
by the lightness with which we impute ungenerous con- 
duct or practices to each other. Surely no case is so 
sacred, no client so dear, that ever an advocate should 
be called upon to barter his own self-respect. If that 
be our duty, our great and glorious profession is no call- 
inor for a crentleman." 

The relation of law to poetry is proverbially antago- 
nistic ; and the attempt to bind imagination to techni- 
calities has usually proved a hopeless experiment ; and 
yet it is curious to note how many of the brotherhood of 
song were originally destined for this profession, and 
how similar their confessions are, of a struggle, a com- 
promise, and finally, an abandonment of jurisprudence 
for the sake of the Muses. Ovid, Petrarch, Tasso, Mil- 
ton, Cowper, Ariosto, and others, are examples ; Scott 
was faithful awhile to a branch of the law ; Blackstone's 
only known poem is a "Farewell to the Muse;" Mar- 
shall and Story wooed the Nine, in their youth ; Tal- 
fourd deemed it requisite to declare, in the preface to 



190 LAWYERS. 

" Ion," that he '' left no duty for this idle trade," and 
Procter only weaves a song in the intervals of his stern 
task as a Commissioner of Lunacy. With philosophy 
the law is more congenial : Bacon and Mackintosh are 
illustrious examples of their united pursuit. Sir Thomas 
More wrote verses on the wall of his prison with a coal, 
and Addison compliments Somers on his poetry in his 
dedication of the " Campaign." Lord Mansfield's name 
appears in history a successful competitor for the Oxford 
prize poem. Lyndhurst and Denham were given to 
rhyme, and Sir William Jones is popularly known by 
his nervous lines on " What constitutes a State." Lord 
Jeffrey is one of the most characteristic modern exam- 
jDles of the union of legal and literary success, — his 
taste of the latter kind having, with the aid of a felici- 
tous style, made him the most famous reviewer of his 
day, while the mental traits of the advocate unfitted him 
to appreciate the ideal, as they rendered him expert and 
brilliant in the discussion of rhetoric, facts, and philos- 
ophy. 

Its connection with the most adventurous and tragic 
realities of life often brings law into the sphere of the 
dramatic and imaginative. Popular fiction has found 
in its annals all the material for profound human inter- 
est and artistic effect. vScott's most pathetic tale, the 
" Heart of Mid-Lothian," " Ten Thousand a- Year," and 
" Bleak House," are memorable examples. The trials 
of Russell, Strafford, Vane, and other noble prisoners 
charged with high treason, have furnished both plot and 
incidents for popular novelists. Uriah Heep, Oily Gam- 
mon, and Gilbert Glossin, are familiar types of legal 
villainy. Thackeray's best work, artistically speaking, — 
"Henry Esmond," — is largely indebted to the State 



LA WYERS. 191 

Trials of Queen Anne's time for its material. Have you 
ever seen Portia enacted by a woman of genius ? Then 
has the romance of law been impersonated forever to 
your mind. That demoniac plaintiff, so memorably rep- 
resented by Kean, with his haunting expression and 
voice, — the noble wife of Bassanio, uttering, in tones 
of musical entreaty, her immortal plea for Mercy, and, 
when it failed to touch the Jew's heart of adamant, 
cleaving his hope of vengeance by a subtle evasion, — 
the joy of Antonio, the fiat of the judge, the merry re- 
union and gay bridal talk at Belmont that night, whose 
moonlit gladness lives forever in the page of Shak- 
speare ; — Queen Katherine's defence, and Othello's 
argument before their judges, equally show how effec- 
tive is a tribunal under the hand of the poet of Nature ; 
and every barrister of long experience can relate epi- 
sodes in his career " stranger than fiction." 

Although one would naturally turn to the State Tri- 
als, Causes Celehres, " Memoirs of Yidocq," and similar 
works, for the dramatic materials developed by process 
of law, yet, to the initiated, there is an equal fund of 
interest in those researches of the profession which ap- 
pear to deal only with technicalities. How many effect- 
ive situations have playwrights, and such observers of 
human nature as Hogarth, drawn from, or grouped 
around the formal act of making or reading a "Will ! 
There is positive romance in the task of the Convey- 
ancer, when he traces the title of an estate far back 
through the ramifications of family history, often bring- 
ing to light the most curious historical facts and remark- 
able personal incidents. Questions of property, of heir- 
ship, of fraud, and of divorce, involve manifold relative 
facts, that only require the sequence and arrangement 



192 LAWYERS. 

of literary art, to make them dramas. Perhaps no field 
of character has yielded types as memorable to the 
writers of modern fiction as that of the Law. Think 
of Balzac's diagnosis of the French statutes regulating 
burial and marriage settlements, in his psychological 
Tales ; of Brass, Tulkinghorn, and Peyton. Libel cases 
vie with police reports in unveiling the tragedy and 
comedy of life. That a trial involves scope for the 
broadest humor, or the most facetious invention, is evi- 
dent from the Moot Court having become a permanent 
form of public entertainment in London. 

No profession affords better opportunities for the 
study of human nature ; indeed, an acute insight of 
motives is a prerequisite of success ; but unfortunately 
it is the dark side of character, the selfish instincts, that 
are most frequently disjolayed in litigation, and hence 
the exclusive recognition of these which many a prac- 
tised lawyer manifests. In its ideal phase, among the 
noblest — in its possible actuality, among the lowest — 
of human pursuits, we can scarcely wonder that popular 
sentiment and literature exhibit such apparently irrec- 
oncilable estimates of its value and tendencies. Eng- 
lish lawyers of the first class are scholars and gentle- 
men. Classical knowledge and familiarity with standard 
modern literature are indispensable to their equipment ; 
and such attainments are usually conducive to a humane 
and refined character. In the programme suggested by 
eminent lawyers, for a general training for the Bar, there 
is, however, an amusing diversity of opinion as to the 
best literary culture ; one writer recommends the Bible, 
another Shakspeare, one English history, and another 
Joe Miller, as the best resource for apt quotation and 
discipline in the art of efficient rhetoric. Coke was re- 



LAWYERS. 193 

markable for his citations from Virgil. But there is no 
doubt that general knowledge is an essential advantage 
to the lawyer, if he understand the rare art of using it 
with tact. The mere fact that the highest political dis- 
tinction and official duty are open to the lawyer, ought 
to incline him to liberal studies and comprehensive ac- 
quaintance with literature, science, and philosophy. 

How distinctly in social life the phases of the legal 
mind have become, is evident from such allusion as that 
of a Quarterly Reviewer, who, in a political discussion, 
remarks that " Mr. Percival was only a poorish nisi 
prius lawyer, and there is no kind of human being so 
disagreeable to the gross Tory nation ; " while De Quin- 
cey, with that philosophic benignity which sometimes 
inspires his weird pen, observes that, " he had often 
thought that the influence of a portion of the acrid hu- 
mors, which seem an element in the human mental con- 
stitution, being drained off, as it were, in forensic dispu- 
tation, raised the lawyer above the average of mankind, 
in the qualities that give enjoyment to society." 

The trial of Aaron Burr elicited the most character- 
istic eloquence of Clay and Wirt ; that of Knapp, the 
tragic force of statement in which Webster excelled. 
Emmet's address to his judges has become a charter to 
his countrymen. Patrick Henry's remarkable powers 
of argument and appeal, which fanned the embers of 
Revolutionary zeal into a flame, originally exhibited 
themselves in a Virginia court - house. And, if elo- 
quence has been justly described as existing " in the 
man, in the subject, and in the occasion," we can easily 
imagine why the legal profession affords it such frequent 
and extensive scope. 

The intellectual process by which the advocate seeks 
13 



194 LAWYERS. 

his ends is observable in the best conversation and writ- 
ing. Ahnost all good talkers are essentially jDleaders ; 
they espouse, defend, illustrate, or maintain a question. 
Many of Lord Jeffrey's reviews are little else but spe- 
cial pleadings, and Macaulay's most brilliant articles 
are digests executed with taste and eloquence ; the sub- 
ject is first thoroughly explored, then its presentation 
systematized, and afterwards stated, argued, and summed 
up, after the manner of a charge or plea, with the addi- 
tion of rhetorical graces inadmissible in a legal case. 
There is nothing, therefore, in the peculiar exercise of 
the faculties which renders law a profession apt to per- 
vert second-rate minds ; the evil lies in the predeter- 
mined side, the logic aforethought, — if we may so say, 
— the interested choice and dogmatical assumption of 
a certain view undertaken " for a consideration." " I 
know some barristers," observes Thackeray, " who mis- 
take you and I for jury-boxes when they address us ; but 
these are not your modest barristers, not your true gen- 
tlemen." 

The special pleading and judicial complacency of 
Jeffrey — in other words his lawyer's mind — prevented 
his recognition of the highest and best poetical merit. 
It has been said of the conversation of his circle at 
Edinburgh, that it was, " in a very great measure, made 
up of brilliant disquisition, of sharp word-catching, in- 
genious thinking, and parrying of dialectics, and all the 
quips and quiddities of bar-pleading. It was the talk 
of a society to which lawyers and lecturers had, for at 
least a hundred years, given the tone." * 

When from the advocate we pass to the bench, and 
from the feed barrister to the philosophical jurist, a new 
* Lockhart's Life of Scott. 



LAWYERS. 195 

and majestic vista opens to the view. As in literature, 
two great divisions mark tlie legal character : there is 
the narrow but thoroughly informed practitioner, and 
the comprehensive judicial mind, — the first only dis- 
tinguished within a limited bound of immediate utility 
and respectable adherence to precedent, and the other 
a pioneer in the realm of truth, a brave and original 
minister at the altar of justice. Lord Brougham, in his 
" Sketches of English Statesmen," has admirably indi- 
cated these two classes. To the former he says, " The 
precise dictates of English statutes, and the dictates of 
English judges and English text-writers, are the stand- 
ard of justice. They are extremely suspicious of any 
enlarged or general views upon so serious a subject as 
law." The second and higher order of lawyers are 
well described in his portrait of Lord Grant, of whose 
charges he remarks : " Forth came a strain of clear, 
unbroken fluency, disposing, in the most luminous order, 
all the facts and all the arguments in the cause ; reduc- 
ing into clear and simple arrangement the most entan- 
gled masses of broken, conflicting statement ; settling 
one doubt by a parenthetical remark, passing over an- 
other only more decisive that it was condensed ; and 
giving out the whole impression of the case upon the 
judge's mind, — the material view, with argument 
enough to show why he so thought, and to prove him 
right, and without so much reasoning as to make you 
forget that it was a judgment you were hearing, and not 
a speech." Do we not often find, in literature and in 
life, counterparts of this picture of a judicial mind ? 
Add to it discovery, and we have the legal philosopher ; 
intrepid love of right, and we recognize the legal re- 
former. To this noble category belong such lawyers as 



196 LAWYERS. 

Mansfield and Marshall, Romilly, Erskine, and "Web- 
ster. Genius for the bar is as varied, in its character, 
as that for poetry or art. In one man the gift is acute- 
ness, in another felicity of language ; here extraordinary 
perspicuity of statement, there singular ingenuity of 
argument. It is rhetoric, manner, force of purpose, a 
glamour that subdues, or a charm that wins ; so that no 
precise rules, irrespective of individual endowments, can 
be laid down to secure forensic triumph. Doubtless, 
however, the union of a sympathetic temperament and 
an attractive manner with logical power and native elo- 
quence form the ideal equipment of the pleader. Ers- 
kine seems to have combined these qualities in perfec- 
tion, and to have woven a spell both for soul and sense. 
He magnetized, physically and intellectually, his audi- 
ence. " Juries," says his biographer, "• declared that 
they felt it impossible to remove their looks from him 
when he had riveted, and, as it were, fascinated them 
by his first glance ; and it used to be a common remark 
of men who observed his motions, that they resembled 
those of a blood-horse." 

The tendency to subterfuge in the less highly en- 
dowed, is but an incidental liability; in general, law- 
practice seems to harden and make sceptical the mind 
absorbed in its details. One can almost invariably 
detect the keen look of distrust or the smile of incre- 
dulity in the physiognomy of the barrister. Every- 
thing like sentiment, disinterestedness, and frank dem- 
onstration, is apt to be regarded without faith or sym- 
pathy. Most lawyers confess that they place no reliance 
on the statements of their clients. If you introduce a 
spiritual hypothesis or a practical view of any topic, it is 
treated by this class of men with ill-concealed scorn. 



LAWYERS. 197 

The habit of their minds is logical ; they usually ignore 
and repudiate those instincts which experience seldom 
reveals to them, and observation of life in its coarser 
phases leads them to doubt and contemn. But, while 
thus less open to the gentler and more sacred sympa- 
thies, they often possess the distinction of manliness, of 
courage, and generosity. The very process which so 
exclusively develops the understanding, and makes their 
ideal of intellectual greatness to consist in aptitude, sub- 
tlety, and reasoning power, tends to give a certain vigor 
and alertness to the thinking faculty, and to emancipate 
it from morbid influences. One of Ben Jonson's char- 
acters thus defines the lawyer : — 

" I oft have heard him say how he admired 
Men of your laAV-profession, that could speak 
To every cause and things mere contraries, 
Till they were hoarse again, yet all be law. 
That, with most quick agility, could turn 
And return, make knots and undo them, 
Give forked counsel, take provoking gold 
On either hand, — and put it up." 

And one of Balzac's characters says : — " Savez-vous, 
mon cher, qu'il existe dans notre societe trois hommes : 
le pretre, le medecin, et I'homme de justice, qui ne peu- 
vent pas estimer le monde ? lis ont des robes noires, 
peut-etre parce qu'ils portent le deuil de toutes les ver- 
tus, de toutes les illusions. Le plus malheureux des trois 
est VavoueP When the question at issue is purely util- 
itarian, and the interest discussed one of outward and 
practical relations, this legal training comes into emi- 
nent efficiency ; in a word, it is applicable to affairs, but 
not to sentiment, to fact, but not to abstract truth. How 
evanescent is often a great lawyer's fame ; often as in- 
tangible as that of a great vocalist or actor. Even their 



198 LA WYERS. 

eloquence is now rare. Great lawyers are uniforrnly 
distrustful of rhetoric, and their jDower is based on 
knowledge. We learn from the son and biographer of 
Chief Justice Parsons that a special reason of his emi- 
nent superiority was that accident gave him early and 
undisturbed access to the best law library in America. 
It has been truly said, that the eloquence of the bar has 
become a tradition ; '' it is suspected as impugning sense 
and knowledge," and is opposed to the practical spirit 
of the age. Yet, the advocate, like the poet, is occa- 
sionally born, not made, notwithstanding the maxim 
orator Jit. A mind fertile in expedients, warmed by a 
temperament which instinctively seizes upon, and, we 
had almost said, incarnates, a cause, is a phenomenon 
that sometimes renders law an inspiration instead of a 
dogma. vSuch a pleader lately lived in one of the East- 
ern States. Not only the grasp of his thought, but his 
elocution, announced that he had literally thrown himself 
into the case. It would be more strictly correct to say 
that he had absorbed it. The gesture, the eye, the tone 
of his voice, the quiver of the muscle, nay, each lock 
of his long steel-gray hair, that he tossed back from his 
dripping brow, in the excitement of his fluent harangue, 
seemed alive and overflowing with the rationale and the 
sentiment of the cause ; his enthusiasm was real, how- 
ever it may have originated ; and, by identifying himself 
with his client, he espoused the argument as if it were 
vital to his own interest. Such instances, however, are 
exceptional ; few are the lawyers thus constituted. Ac- 
cepting their cases objectively, and maintaining them by 
formula, the usual effect is that which Burke describes 
in his character of Greville : " He was bred to the law, 
which is, in my opinion, one of the first and noblest of 



LAWYERS. 199 

human sciences — a science which does more to quicken 
and invigorate the understanding than all other kinds 
of learning put together ; but it is not apt, except in 
persons very happily born, to open and liberalize the 
mind exactly in the same proportion." 

Why is the poet's function the noblest ? Because it 
is inspired, not arbitrarily decreed by the will. Mental 
activity is grand and beautiful in proportion as it is dis- 
interested ; and it is on account of the almost inevita- 
ble forcing, by circumstances, of a lawyer's mind from 
the line of honest conviction into that of determined 
casuistry, that the moral objection to the pursuit is so 
often urged. " The indiscriminate defence of right and 
wrong," says Junius, " contracts the understanding while 
it corrupts the heart." , Some men, in conversation, af- 
fect us as unreal. We attach no vital interest to what 
they say, because the mind appears to act wholly apart 

— the fusion of sense and feeling, which we call soul, is 
wanting ; there is no conviction, no personal sentiment, 
no unselfish love of truth in what they say ; and yet it 
may be intelligent, erudite, and void of positive falsity 

— still it is mechanical, the intellect is used, not insjnred, 
willed to act, not moved thereto : this is the character- 
istic of legal training, unmodified by the higher senti- 
ments ; it makes intellectual machines, logical grist- 
mills, talkers by rote; the rational powers, from long 
slavery to temporary and interested aims, seem to have 
lost magnanimity ; their spontaneous, genuine, and ear- 
nest action has yielded to a conventional and predeter- 
mined habit. Yet at the other extreme, we see the 
most lofty and permanent intellectual results. It has 
been justly said that the Code Napoleon is even now 
the sole embodiment of Lord Bacon's thought — " put 



200 LA WYERS. 

them (the laws) into shape, inform them with philos- 
ophy, reduce them in bulk, give them into every man's 
hand. Laws are made to guard the rights of the peo- 
ple, not to feed the lawyers." 

Whoever, in the freshness of youthful emotions, has 
been present at the tribunal of a free country, where 
the character of the judge, the integrity of the jury, 
and the learning and eloquence of the advocates have 
equalled the moral exigencies and the ideal dignity of 
the scene, and when the case has possessed a high tragic 
or social interest, can never lose the impression thus 
derived of the majesty of the law. No public scene of 
human life can surpass it to the apprehension of a 
thoughtful spectator. He seems to behold the principle 
of justice as it exists in the very elements of humanity, 
and to stand on the primeval foundation of civil society ; 
the searching struggle for truth, the conscientious appli- 
cation of law to evidence, the stern recital of the pros- 
ecutor, the appeal of the defence, the constant test of 
inquiry, of reference to statutes and precedents, the 
luminous arrangement of conflicting facts by the judge, 
his imjDartial deductions and clear final statement, the 
interval of suspense and the solemn verdict, combine 
to present a calm, reflective, almost sublime exercise of 
the intellect and moral sentiments, in order to conform 
authority to their highest dictates, which elevates and 
widens the function and the glory of human life and 
duty. Compare, with such a picture, the base mockery 
of justice exhibited by the Inquisition of old, and an 
Austrian court-martial of our own day ; the arbitrary fiat 
of an Eastern official, and the murderous ordeal of the 
provisional bodies that ruled during the first French 
revolution, and it is easy to appreciate the identity of 



LA WYERS. 201 

justly-administered law with civilization and freedom. 
" Justice," says Webster, " is the great interest of man 
on earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized 
beings and civilized nations together. "Wherever her 
temple stands, and as long as it is duly honored, there 
is a foundation for social security, general happiness, 
and the improvement and progress of our race. And 
whoever labors on this edifice, with usefulness and dis- 
tinction, whoever clears its foundations, strengthens its 
pillars, adorns its entablatures, or contributes to raise 
its august dome still higher in the skies, connects him- 
self, in name and fame and character, with that which 
is, and must be, as durable as the frame of human 
society." 





SEPULCHRES. 

" The hills, 
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun ; the vales, 
Stretching in pensive quietness between ; 
The venerable woods ; rivers that move . 
lu majesty, and the complaiuing brooks 
That make the meadow green ; and poured round all 
Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste, 
Are but the solemn decorations all 
Of the great tomb of man," —Bryant. 

HE comparatively recent and widely diffused 
interest in the establishment of rural ceme- 
teries in this country is an auspicious reaction 
of popular feeling. Never did a Christian nation man- 
ifest so little conservative and exalted sentiment, apart 
from its direct religious scope, as our own. This patent 
defect is owing, in a measure, to the absence of the ven- 
erable, the time-hallowed, and the contemplative in the 
scenes and the life of our country ; it is, however, con- 
firmed by the busy competition, the hurried, experimen- 
tal, and ambitious spirit of the people. Local change 
is the rule, not the exception ; scorn of wise delay, 
moderation, and philosophic content, the prevalent 
feeling ; impatience, temerity, and self-confidence, the 
characteristic impulse ; houses are locomotive, church 
edifices turned into post-offices, and even theatres ; an- 
cestral domains are bartered away in the second gener- 
ation ; old trees bow to the axe ; the very sea is en- 
croached upon, and landmarks are removed almost as 
soon as they grow familiar ; change, which is the life 



SEPULCHRES. 203 

of Nature, seems to be regarded as not less the vital 
element of what is called local improvement and pros- 
perity ; the future is almost exclusively regarded, and 
the past contemned. 

If a man cites the precedents of experience, he is 
sneered at as a " fogy " ; if he has a competence, he 
risks it in speculation ; newspapers usurp the attention 
once given to standard lore ; the picturesque rocks of 
the rural wayside are defiled by quack advertisements, 
the arcana of spirituality degraded by legerdemain, the 
dignity of reputation sullied by partisan brutality, the 
graces of social refinement abrogated by a mercenary 
standard, the lofty aims of science levelled by charlatan 
tricks, and independence of character sacrificed to de- 
basing conformity ; observation is lost in locomotion, 
thought in action, ideality in materialism. Against this 
perversion of life, the sanctity of death protests, often 
vainly, to the general mind, but not ineffectually to the 
individual heart. 

When it was attempted to secure the collection of 
Egyptian antiquities brought hither by Dr. Abbott of 
Cairo, for a future scientific museum to be established 
in New York, the representatives commercial, profes- 
sional, and speculative of ''Young America" scorned 
the bare idea of exchanging gold for mummies, sepul- 
chral lamps, papyrus, and ancient utensils and inscrip- 
tions ; yet, within a tAvelvemonth, a celebrated German 
philologist, a native biblical scholar, and a lecturer on 
the History of Art, eagerly availed themselves of these 
contemned relics to prove and illustrate their respective 
subjects; and the enlightened of Gotham's utilitarian 
citizens acknowledged that the trophies of the past were 
essential to elucidate and confirm the wisdom of the 



204 SEPULCHRES. 

present. It is this idolatry of the immediate which 
stultifies republican perception. Offer a manuscript to 
a publisher, and he instantly inquires if it relates to the 
questions of the day ; if not, it is almost certain to be 
rejected without examination. The conservative ele- 
ment of social life is merged in gregarious intercourse ; 
the youth looks not up to age ; the maiden's susceptibil- 
ities are hardened by premature and promiscuous asso- 
ciation ; external success is glorified, private consistency 
unhonored ; art becomes a trade, literature an expe- 
dient, reform fanaticism ; aspiration is chilled, romance 
outgrown, life unapi^reciated ; and all because the vista 
of departed time is cut off from our theory of moral 
perspective, and existence itself is regarded merely as 
an opportunity for instant and outward success, not a 
link in an eternal chain reaching " before and after." 

Sentiment is the great conservative principle of so- 
ciety ; those instincts of patriotism, local attachment, 
family affection, human sympathy, reverence for truth, 
age, valor, and wisdom, so often alive and conscious in 
the child and overlaid or perverted in the man, — for 
the culture of which our educational systems, habitual 
vocations, domestic and social life, make so little pro- 
vision, — are, in the last analysis, the elements of what- 
ever is noble, efficient, and individual in character ; in 
every moral crisis we appeal to them, as the channels 
whereby we are linked to God and humanity, and 
through which alone we can realize just views or lawful 
action. In our normal condition they may not be often 
exhibited ; yet none the less they constitute the latent 
force of civil society. To depend upon intelligence 
and will is, indeed, the creed of the age, and especially 
of this republic ; but these powers, when unhallowed 



SEPULCHRES. 205 

by the primal and better instincts, react and fail of 
their end. It is so in individual experience and in 
national affairs. The absence of the sentiments which 
the pride of intellect and the brutality of self-will 
thus repudiate, is the occasion of our greatest errors ; 
to them is the final appeal, through them the only 
safety ; and their violation was the precursor of base 
and bloody treason ; their vindication but the renewal 
through" sacrifice of a normal and vital interest of hu- 
man society. The war for the Union has been expia- 
tory not less than patriotic. And the great lesson 
taught by these and similar errors is, that the life, the 
spirit, the faith of the country had, by a long course of 
national prosperity and a blind worship of outward suc- 
cess, become gradually but inevitably material ; so that 
motives of patriotism, of reverence, of courtesy, of gen- 
erous sympathy, — in a word, the sentiments as distin- 
guished from the passions and the will, had ceased to 
be recognized as legitimate, and the reliable springs of 
action and guides of life. It was the repudiation of 
these which horrified Burke at the outbreak of the 
French Revolution; he augured the worst from that 
event, at the best hour of its triumph, because it stripped 
Humanity of her divine attribute of sentiment, and left 
her to shiver naked in the cold light of reason and will, 
unredeemed by the sense of justice, of beauty, of com- 
passion, of honorable pride, which under the name of 
Chivalry, he lamented as extinct. He spoke and felt as 
a man whose brain was kindled by his heart, and whose 
heart retained the pure impulse of these sacred instincts 
and knew their value as the medium of all truth and the 
basis of civil order. They were temporarily quenched 
in France by the frenzy of want ; they are inactive and 



206 SEPULCHRES. 

in abeyance here, through the gross pressure of mate- 
rial prosj^erity and mercenary ambition. Hence what- 
ever effectively appeals to them, and whoever sincerely 
recognizes them, whether by example or precept, in a 
life or a poem, through art or rhetoric, in respect for 
the past, love of nature, or devotion to truth and beauty, 
excites our cordial sympathy. In this age and land, no 
man is a greater benefactor than he who scorns the 
worldly and narrow philosophy of life which degrades 
to a material, unaspiring level the tone of mind and 
the tendency of the affections. If he invent a charac- 
ter, lay out a domain, erect a statue, weave a stanza, 
write a paragraph, utter a word, or chant a melody 
which stirs in any breast the love of the beautiful, admi- 
ration for the heroic, or the chastening sense of awe, — 
any sentiment, in truth, which partakes of disinterest- 
edness, and merges self " in an idea dearer than self," 
— uplifts, expands, fortifies, intensifies, and therefore 
inspires, — he is essentially and absolutely a benefac- 
tor to society, a genuine though perhaps unrecognized 
champion of what is " highest in man's nature " against 
what is " lowest in man's destiny." And not the least 
because the most universal of these higher and holier 
feelings is the sentiment of Death, consecrating its sym- 
bols, guarding its relics, and keeping fresh and sacred 
its memories. 

The disposition of the mortal remains was and is, 
to a considerable extent, in England, an ecclesiastical 
function ; in Catholic lands it is a priestly interest. In- 
dignity to the body, after death, was one of the most 
dreaded punishments of heresy and crime ; to scatter 
human ashes to the winds, expose the skulls of malefac- 
tors in iron gratings over city portals, refuse interment 



SEPULCHRES. 207 

in ground consecrated by the Church, and disinter and 
insult the body of an unpopular ruler, were among the 
barbarous reprisals of offended power. And yet, in 
these same twilight eras, in the heathen customs and 
the mediaeval laws, under the sway of Odin and the 
Franks, the sentiment of respect for the dead was 
acted upon in a manner to shame the indifference and 
hardihood of later and more civilized times. With the 
emigration to America, this sentiment looked for its 
le^al vindication entirely to the civic authority. With 
their reaction from spiritual tyranny, our ancestors 
transferred this, with other social interests, to popular 
legislation and private inclination. Hence the compar 
atively indefinite enactments on the subject, and the 
need of a uniform code, applicable to all the States, 
and organized so as clearly to establish the rights both 
of the living and the dead, and to preserve inviolable 
the choice of disposition, and the place of deposit, of 
human remains. 

The practical treatment of this subject is anomalous. 
Amid the scenes of horror, outraging humanity in every 
form, which characterized the anarchy incident to the 
first dethronement of legitimate authority in France, 
how startling to read, among the first decrees of the 
Convention, provisions for the dead, while pitiless de- 
struction awaited the living ! And in this country, 
while motives of hygiene limit intermural interments, 
and a higher impulse sets apart and adorns rural cem- 
eteries, our rail-tracks, still often ruthlessly intersect the 
fields of the dead, and ancestral tombs are annually 
broken up to make way for streets and warehouses. 
The tomb of Washington was long dilapidated ; the 
bones of Revolutionary martyrs are neglected, and half 



208 « SEPULCHRES. 

the graveyards of the country desecrated by indiffer- 
ence or misuse. The conservative piety of the Hebrews 
reproaches our inconsiderate neglect, in the faithfully 
tended cemetery of their race at Newport, R. T., where 
not a Jew remains to guard the ashes of his fathers, 
thus carefully preserved by a testamentary fund. Of 
late years elaborate monuments in rural cemeteries 
have done much to redeem this once proverbial neglect. 
They constitute the most sacred adornment of the envi- 
rons of our principal cities. 

Both the modes and jDlaces of burial have an histori- 
cal significance. The pyre of the Greeks and Romans, 
the embalming process of the Egyptians, the funeral 
piles of Hindoo superstition, and those bark stagings, 
curiously regarded by Mississippi voyagers, where In- 
dian corpses are exposed to the elements, — the old 
cross-road interment of the suicide, — the inhumation 
of the early jjatriarchs and Christians, — all symbolize 
eras and creeds. The lying-in-state of the royal de- 
funct, the sable catafalque of the Catholic temples, the 
salutes over the warrior's grave, the " Day of the Dead " 
celebrated in Southern Europe, the eulogies in French 
cemeteries, the sublime ritual of the Establishment, and 
the silent prayer of the Friends, requiems, processions, 
emblems, inscriptions, badges, and funereal garlands 
mark faith, nation, rank, and profession at the very 
gates of the sepulchre. Vain is the sceptic's sneer, 
useless the utilitarian's protest ; by these poor tributes 
the heart letters its undying regret and its immortal 
prophecies, though " mummy has become merchandise," 
and to be " but pyramidically extant is a fallacy in 
duration"; for, as the same religious philosopher* of 
Norwich declared, " it is the heaviest stone that melan- 
* Sir T. Browne. 



SEPULCHRES. 209 

choly can throw at a man, to tell him he is at the end 
of his nature " ; and therefore, in the grim Tuscan's 
Hell, the souls of those who denied their immortality 
when in the flesh, are shut up through eternity in liv- 
ing tombs. How the idea of a local abode for the mor- 
tal remains is hallowed to our nature, is realized in the 
pathos which closes the noble and sacred life of the 
Hebrew lawgiver : " And he buried him in a valley of 
the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor ; but no man 
knoweth of his selpuchre unto this day." =^ Etruria's 
best relics are sepulchral urns ; social distinctions are 
as obvious in the tombs of the ancients as in their pal- 
aces : witness the Columbarium in ruins and the fresh 
pit of the plebeians, the sandy isles of the Venetian 
cemetery, and Pompeii's street of tombs. Byron thought 
" ImjAora pace " the most affecting of epitaphs ; and the 
visitor at Coppet recognizes a melancholy appropriate- 
ness in the garden-grave of its gifted mistress. 

Natural, therefore, and human is the consoling thought 
of the poet, of the ship bringing home for burial all of 
earth that remains of his lamented friend : — 

" I hear the noise about thy keel ; 

I hear the bell struck in the night; 
I see the cabin-window bright; 
I see the sailor at the wheel. 

*' Thou bringest the sailor to his wife, 

And travelled men from foreign lands; 
And letters unto trembling hands ; 
And thy dark freight, a vanished life. 

" So bring him : we have idle dreams : 
This look of quiet flatters thus 
Our home-bred fancies; O, to us, 
The fools of habit, sweeter seems 

* Deut. xxxiv. 6. 
14 



210 SEPULCHRES. 

* To rest beneath the clover sod, 

That takes the sunshine and the rains, 
Or where the kneeling hamlet drains 
The chalice of the grapes of God, 

■' Than if with thee the roaring wells 

Should gulf him fathom deep in brine ; 
And hands so often clasped in mine 
Should toss with tangle and with shells." * 

Doubtless many of the processes adopted by blind 
affection and superstitious homage, to rescue the poor 
human casket from destruction, are grotesque and un- 
desirable. Had Segato, the discoverer of a chemical 
method of petrifying flesh, survived to publish the 
secret, it would be chiefly for anatomical purposes that 
we should appreciate his invention ; there is something 
revolting in the artificial conservation of what, by the 
law of Nature, should undergo elemental dissolution ; 
and it is but a senseless homage to cling to the shat- 
tered chrysalis when the winged embryo has soared 
away : 

" Air ombra de' cipressi e dentro I'ume 

Confortate di pianto, e forse il sonno 

Delia morte men duro? " f 

Nature sometimes is a conservative mother even of 
mortal lineaments ; in glacier or tarn, in tuffo and lime- 
stone fossils, she keeps for ages the entire relics of 
humanity. The fantastic array of human bones in the 
Capuchin cells at Palermo and Rome; the eyeless, 
shrunken face of Carlo Borromeo embedded in crystal, 
jewels, and silk, beneath the Milan cathedral ; the flesh- 
less figure of old Jeremy Bentham in the raiment of 
this working-day world ; the thousand spicy wrappings 

* Tennyson's In Memoriam. 
t Dei SepolchH, di Ugo Foscolo. 



SEPULCHRES. 211 

which enfold the exhumed mummy whose exhibition 
provoked Horace Smith's facetious rhymes, — these, 
and such as these, poor attempts to do vain honor to 
our clay, are not less repugnant to the sentiment of 
death, in its rehgious and enlightened manifestation, 
than the promiscuous and careless putting out of sight 
of the dead after battle and in the reign of pestilence, 
or the brutal and irreverent disposal of the bodies of 
the poor in the diurnal pits of the Naples Campo Santo. 
More accordant with our sense of respect to what once 
enshrined an immortal spirit, and stood erect and free, 
even in barbaric manhood, is the adjuration of the 
bard : — 

" Gather him to his grave again, 

And solemnly and softly lay, 
Beneath the verdure of the plain, 

The warrior's scattered bones away; 
The soul hath quickened every part, — 

That remnant of a martial brow, 
Those ribs that held the mighty heart, 

That strong arm, — strong no longer now ! 
Spare them, each mouldering relic spare, 

Of God's own image; let them rest, 
Till not a trace shall speak of where ' 

The awful likeness was impressed." 

Yet there are many and judicious reasons for prefer- 
ring cremation to inhumation ; the prejudice against the 
former having doubtless originated among the early 
Christians, in their respect for patriarchal entombment, 
practised by the Jews, and their natural horror at any 
custom which savored of heathenism. But there is 
actually no religious obstacle, and, under proper arrange- 
ment, no public inconvenience, in the burning of the 
dead. It is, too, a process which singularly attracts 
those who would save the remains of those they love 



212 SEPULCHRES. 

from the jaossibility of desecration, and anticipate the 
ultimate fate of the mortal coil " to mix forever with the 
elements " ; at all events, there can be no rational objec- 
tion to the exercise of private taste, and the gratification 
of personal feeling on this point. " I bequeath my soul 
to God," said Michael Angelo, in his terse will, " my 
body to the earth, and my possessions to my nearest 
kin " ; — and this right to dispose of one's mortal 
remains appears to be instinctive ; though the indig- 
nation excited by any departure from custom would 
indicate that, in popular apprehension, the privilege so 
rarely exercised is illegally usurped. 

The outcry in a Western town, a few years ago, when 
cremation was resorted to, at the earnest desire of a 
deceased wife, and the offence taken and expressed in 
an Eastern city, when it became known that a distin- 
guished surgeon, from respect to science, had bequeathed 
his skeleton to a medical college, evidence how little, 
among us, is recognized the right of the living to dis- 
pose of their remains, and the extent to which popular 
ignorance and individual prejudice are allowed to inter- 
fere in what "good sense and good feeling declare an 
especial matter of private concern. Yet that other than 
the ordinary modes of disposing of human relics are not 
absolutely repugnant to endearing associations, may be 
inferred from the poetic interest which sanctions to the 
imagination the obsequies of Shelley. Although it was 
from convenience that the body of that ideal bard, so 
misunderstood, so humane, so " cradled into poesy by 
wrong," was burned, yet the lover of his siDiritual muse 
beholds in that lonely pyre, blazing on the shores of the 
Mediterranean, an elemental destruction of the material 



SEPULCHRES. 213 

shrine of a lofty and loving soul, accordant with his 
aspiring, isolated, and imaginative career.^ 

Vain, indeed, have proved the studious precautions 
of Egyptians to conserve from decay and sacrilege the 
relics of their dead. Not only has " mummy become 
merchandise," in the limited sense of the English mor- 
alist ; the traffic of the Jews in their gums and spices, 
the distribution of their exhumed forms in museums, 
and the use of their cases for fuel, is now superseded 
by commerce in their cerements for the manufacture of 
paper ; and it is a startling evidence of that human 
vicissitude from which even the shrouds of ancient 
kings are not exempt, that recently, in one of the new 
towns of this continent, a newspaper was printed on 
sheets made from the imported rags of Egyptian mum- 
mies. 

Of primitive and casual landmarks, encountered on 
solitary moors and hills, the cairn and the Alpine cross 
affect the imagination with a sense alike of mortality 
and tributary sentiment, even more vividly than the 
elaborate mausoleum, from the rude expedients and the 
solemn isolation ; while the beauty of cathedral archi- 

* A recent advocate for cremation thus suggests the process: "On 
a gentle eminence, surrounded by pleasant grounds, stands a con- 
venient, well-ventilated chapel, with a high spire or steeple. At the 
entrance, where some of the mourners might prefer to take leave of the 
body, are chambers for their accommodation. Within the editice are 
seats for those who follow the remains to the last ; there is also an organ 
and a gallery for choristers. In the centre of the chapel, embellished 
with appropriate emblems and devices, is erected a shrine of marble, 
somewhat like those which cover the ashes of the great and mighty in 
our old cathedrals, the openings being filled with prepared glass. 
"Within this — a sufficient space intervening — is an inner shrine, cov- 
ered with bright, non-radiatuig metal, and within this again is a cov- 
ered sarcophagus of tempered fire-clay, with one or more longitudinal 
slits near the top, extending its whole length. As soon as the body is 



214 SEPULCHRES. 

tecture is hallowed by ancestral monuments. Of all 
Scott's characters, the one that most deeply enlists our 
sympathies, through that quaint pathos whereby the 
Past is made eloquent both to fancy and affection, is 
Old Mortality renewing the half-obliterated inscriptions 
on the gravestones of the Covenanters, his white hair 
fluttering in the wind as he stoops to his melancholy 
task, and his aged pony feeding on the grassy mounds. 
Even our practical Franklin seized the first leisure from 
patriotic duties, on his visit to England, in order to ex- 
amine the sej^ulchral tablets which bear the names of 
his progenitors. 

A cursory glance at the most cherished trophies of 
literature indicates how deeply the sentiment of death 
is wrought into the mind and imagination, — how it 
invests with awe, love, pity, and hope, thoughtful and 
gifted spirits, inspires their art, elevates their concep- 
tions, and casts over life and consciousness a sacred 
mystery. The most finished and suggestive piece of 
modern English verse is elegiac, — its theme a country 
churchyard, and so instinct are its melancholy numbers 
with pathos and reflection, embalmed in rhythmical 
music, that its lines have passed into household words. 
Our national poet, who has sung of Nature in all her 

deposited therein, sheets of flame at an immensely high temperature, 
rush through the long apertures from end to end ; and acting as a com- 
bination of a modified oxyhydrogen blow-pipe, with the reverberatoiy 
furnace, utterly and completely consume and decompose the body in 
an incredibly short space of time ; even the large quantity of water it 
contains is decomposed by the extreme heat, and its elements, instead 
of retarding, aid combustion, as is the case in tierce conflagrations. 
The gaseous products of combustion are conveyed away by flues, and 
means being adopted to consume anything like smoke, all that is 
observed from the outside is occasionally a quivering transparent ether 
floating away from the high steeple to mingle with the atmosphere." 



SEPULCHRES. 215 

cliaracteristic phases on this continent, next to those 
ever-renewed glories of the universe has found his 
chief inspiration in the same reverent contemplation : 
" Thanatopsis " was his first grand offering to the Muses, 
and " The Disinterred Warrior," the " Hymn to Death," 
and " The Old Man's Funeral," are but pious variations 
of a strain worthy to be chanted in the temple of hu- 
manity. Shakspeare in no instance comes nearer 
what is highest in our common nature and miraculous 
in our experience, than when he makes the philosophic 
Dane question his soul and confront mortality. The 
once popular and ever-memorable "Night Thoughts" 
of Young elaborate kindred ideas in the light of Chris- 
tian truth ; the most quaintly eloquent of early specu- 
lative writings in English prose is Sir Thomas Browne's 
treatise on Urn-Burial. The most thoughtful and ear- 
nest of modern Italian poems is F'oscolo's " Sepolchri ; " 
the Monody on Sir John Moore, Shelley's Elegy on 
Keats, Tickell's on Addison, Byron's on Sheridan, and 
Tennyson's " In Memoriam," contain the most sincere 
and harmonious utterances of their authors. Not the 
least affecting pages of " The Sketch Book " are those 
which describe the " Village Funeral " and the " Wid- 
ow's Son " ; and the endeared author has marked his 
own sense of the local sanctity of the grave by selecting 
that of his family in " Sleepy Hollow," in the midst of 
scenes endeared by his abode and his fame. Halleck 
has given lyrical immortality to the warrior's death in 
the cause of freedom ; and Wordsworth, in perhaps his 
most quoted ballad, has recorded with exquisite simplic- 
ity childhood's unconsciousness of death ; even the most 
analytical of French novelists found in the laws and 
ceremonial of a Parisian interment, material for his 



216 SEPULCHRES. 

keenest diagnosis of the scenes of life in that mai-vel- 
lous capital. Hope's best descriptive powers were en- 
listed in his sketch of burial-places near Constantinople, 
so pensively contrasting with the more adventurous 
chapters of Anastasius. If in popular literature this 
sentiment is so constantly appealed to, and so enshrined 
in the poet's dream and the philosopher's speculation, 
classic and Hebrew authors have inscribed its me- 
morials in outlines of majestic and graceful import ; 
around it the picturesque and the moralizing, the viva- 
cious and the grandly simple expressions of the Roman, 
the Greek, and the Jewish writers seem to hover with 
the significant plaint, — heroism or faith, — which in- 
vokes us, with the voice of ages, to 

" Pay the deep reverence taught of old, 
The homage of man's heart to death; 
N'or dare to trifle with the mould 
Once hallowed by the Almighty's breath." 

Perhaps there is no instance of this vague and awful 
interest more memorable to the American than when 
he reads, on some ancient tablet in the Old World, the 
burial record of his ancestors. 

The monitory and reminiscent influence of the church- 
yard, apart from all personal associations, cannot, in- 
deed, be over-estimated ; doubtless in a spirit of propri- 
ety and good taste, it is now more frequently suburban, 
made attractive by trees, flowers, a wide landscape, and 
rural peace, and rendered comparatively safe from dese- 
cration by distance from the so-called march of improve- 
ment, which annually changes the aspect of our grow- 
ing towns. Yet, wherever situated, the homes of the 
dead, when made eloquent by art, and kept fresh by 
reverent care, breathe a chastening and holy lesson, 



SEPULCHRES. 217 

perhaps the more impressive when uttered beside the 
teeming camp of life. To the traveller in Europe it is 
a pathetic sight to watch the Norwegian peasants strew 
flowers, every Sabbath, on the graves of their kindred, 
and gives a living interest to the memorials of Scandi- 
navian antiquity gathered in the museums, whereby, 
through the weapons and drinking-cups of stone, bronze, 
and iron, exhumed from graves, he traces the origin and 
growth of that remote civilization. And when time has 
softened the most acute and bitter memories of the War 
for the Union, what monument to individual prowess, 
what trophy of patriotic self-sacrifice will compare, in 
solemn and elevating pathos, with the impression de- 
rived from the " national cemeteries " of the battle-field 
and the hospital ? As Lincoln said of Gettysburg, — 
" they will dedicate us afresh to our country, to human- 
ity, and to God." 

When the traveller gazes on the marble effigy of the 
warrior at Ravenna, and then treads the plain where 
Gaston de Foix fell in battle, the fixed lineaments and 
obsolete armor bring home to his mind the very life of 
the Middle Ages, solemnized by youthful heroism and 
early death ; when he scans the vast city beneath its 
smoky veil, — thick with roofs and dotted with spires, — 
from an elevated point of Pere la Chaise, the humble 
and garlanded cross, and the chiselled names of the 
wise and brave that surround him, cause the parallel 
and inwoven mysteries of life and death to stir the foun- 
tains of his heart with awe, and make his lips tremble 
into prayer ; and, familiar as is the spectacle, the more 
thoughtful of the throng in New York's bustling thor- 
oughfare will sometimes pause and cast a salutary 
glance from the hurrying crowd to the monuments of 



218 SEPULCHRES. 

the heroic Lawrence, the eloquent Emmet, the gallant 
Montgomery, and the patriotic Flamilton. Those asso- 
ciations which form at once the culture and the romance 
of travel are identified with the same eternal sentiment. 
Next in interest to the monuments of genius and char- 
acter are those of death ; or rather, the inspiration of 
the former are everywhere consecrated by the latter. 

" Take the wings 
Of morning, and the Barcan desert pierce, 
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods 
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound 
Save his own dashings, — yet the dead are there! " 

Nero dug his own grave, lest he should be denied 
burial, and Shakspeare guarded his own ashes by an 
imprecatory epitaph ; David praises the men of Jabez 
Gilead who rescue the bones of their king from the 
enemy. It is a sweet custom, — that of making little 
excavations in sepulchral slabs to catch the rain, that 
birds may be lured thither to drink and sing. The 
Chinese sell themselves in order to obtain means to 
bury their parents. ^ 

We enter a city of antiquity — memorable Syracuse 
or disinterred Pompeii — through a street of tombs ; the 
majestic relics of Egyptian civilization are the cenotaphs 
of kings ; the Escurial is Spain's architectural elegy ; 
Abelard's philosophy is superseded, but his love and 
death live daily to the vision of the mourners who go 
from the gay capital of France, to place chaplets on the 
graves of departed friends ; * the grandeurs of West- 

* " How can we reconcile this pious and faithful remembrance with 
the character of a nation generally thought so frivolous and inconstant V 
Let this amiable, affectionate, but slandered people send the stranger 
and the traveller to this place. These carefullj' tended flowers, these 
tombs, will speak their defence." — Memoir of Harriet Preble^ p. 70. 



SEPULCHRES. 219 

minster Abbey are sublimated by the effigies of bards 
and statesmen, and the rare music of St. George's choir 
made solemn by the dust of royalty ; deserted Eavenna 
is peopled with intense life by the creations of Dante 
which haunt his sepulchre ; Arqua is the shrine of affec- 
tionate pilgrims ; the radiant hues and graceful shapes 
of Titian and Canova become ethereal to the fancy, 
when viewed beside their monuments ; St. Peter's is but 
a magnificent apostolic tomb ; and the shadow of mor- 
tality is incarnated in Lorenzo's brooding figure in the 
jewelled temple of the dead Medici. Even the dim, 
half-explored catacombs of Rome yield significant tes- 
timony to the Christian's heart to-day. " The works of 
painting found within them," well says a recent writer, 
" their construction, the inscriptions on the graves, — all 
unite in bearing witness to the simplicity of the faith, 
the purity of the doctrine, the strength of the feeling, 
the change in the lives of the vast mass of the members 
of the early Church of Christ." * 

What resorts are Santa Croce, Mount Vernon, Saint 
Paul's, and Saint Onofrio ! What a goal, through ages, 
the Holy Sepulchre ! How the dim escutcheons sanc- 
tify cathedrals, and sunken headstones the rural ceme- 
tery ! How sacred the mystery of the Campagna hid in 
that " stern round tower of other days," which bears the 
name of a Roman matron ! The beautiful sarcophagus 
of Scipio, the feudal crypt of Theodric, the silent sol- 
dier of the Invalides, the mossy cone of Caius Csestus, 
in whose shadow two English poets f yet speak in grace- 

* Atlantic Monthly, vol. ii. p. 139. 

t"I am now engaged," wrote Mr. Severn, the artist -friend who 
watched over Keats in his last hours, " on a picture of the poet's grave. 
The classical story of ' Endymion ' being the subject of his principal 



220 SEPULCHRES. 

ful epitaphs, Thorwaldsen's grand mausoleum at Copen- 
hagen, composed of his own trophies, — what objects 
are these to win the mind back into the lapsing ages 
and upward with " immortal longings " ! We turn from 
brilliant thoroughfares, alive with creatures of a day, to 
catacombs obscure wath the impalpable dust of bygone 
generations ; we pass from the vociferous piazza to the 
hushed and frescoed cloister, and walk on mural tablets 
whose inscriptions are worn by the feet of vanished 
multitudes ; we steal from the cheerful highway to the 
field of mounds, where a shaft, a cross, or a garland 
breathes of surviving tenderness ; we handle the cloudy 
lachrymal, quaint depository of long-evaporated tears, 
or admire the sculptured urn, the casket of what was 
unutterably precious, even in mortality; and thereby 
life is solemnized, consciousness deepened, and we feel, 
above the tyrannous present, and through the casual 
occupation of the hour, the " electric chain wherewith 
we 're darkly bound." " When I look upon the tombs 
of the great," says Addison, " every emotion of envy 
dies in me ; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, 
every inordinate desire goes out ; when I meet with the 
grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with 
compassion ; when I see the tombs of the parents them- 
selves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom 
we must quickly follow. When I see kings lying by 
those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits 
placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the 

poem, I have introduced a young shepherd sleeping against the head- 
stone, with his flock about him; while the moon from behind the pyra- 
mid illuminates his figure, and serves to realize the poet's favorite 
theme, in the presence of his grave. This interesting incident is not 
fanciful, but is what I actually saw, one autumn evening, at Monte Ter- 
tanio, the year following the poet's death." 



SEPULCHRES. 221 

world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with 
sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, 
fractions, and debates of mankind. When I read the 
several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, 
and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great 
day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and 
make our appearance together." Thus perpetual is the 
hymn of death, thus ubiquitous its memorials, — attest- 
ing not only an inevitable destiny, but a universal sen- 
timent ; under whatever name, — God's Acre, Pantheon, 
Campo Santo, Valhalla, Potter's Field, Greenwood, or 
Mount Auburn, — the last resting-place of the body, 
the last earthly shrine of human love, fame, and sor- 
row, claims — by the pious instinct which originates, the 
holy rites which consecrate, the blessed hopes which 
glorify it — respect, protection, and sanctity. 

There is, indeed, no spot of earth so hallowed to the 
contemplative as that which holds the ashes of an intel- . 
lectual benefactor. What a grateful tribute does the 
transatlantic pilgrim instinctively offer at the sepul- 
chre of Roscoe at Liverpool, of Lafayette in France, of 
Berkeley at Oxford, of Burns at Alloway Kirk, and of 
Keats and Goldsmith, — of all the bards, philosophers, 
and reformers whose conceptions warmed and exalted 
his dawning intelligence, and became thereby sacred to 
his memory forever ! How fruitful the hours— snatched 
from less serene pleasure — devoted to Stratford, Mel- 
rose, and the Abbey ! To realize the value of these 
opportunities, the spirit of humanity enshrined in such 
" Meccas of the mind," we must fancy the barrenness 
of earth stripped of these landmarks of the gifted and 
the lost. How denuded of its most tender lio-ht would 
be Olney, Stoke Pogis, the vale of Florence, the cypress 



222 



SEPULCHRES. 



groves of Rome, and the park at Weimar, unconsecrated 
by the sepulchres of Cowper and Gray, Michael Angelo, 
Tasso, and Schiller, whose sweet and lofty remembrance 
links meadow and stream, mountain and sunset, with 
the thought of all that is most pensive, beautiful, and 
sublime in genius and in woe. 






ACTORS. 

" All the world 's a stage, 
And all the men and women merely players." 

Hamlet. 

RAMATIC talent is far more common than is 
usually believed. In every family where de- 
cided traits of character prevail, it is sponta- 
neously exhibited ; and no intimate circle of friends ia 
which a perfect mutual understanding and entire frank- 
ness exists, can often meet without an instinctive devel- 
opment of a propensity and a gift innate in all intelli- 
gent and genial minds ; either in the play of humor, in 
graphic narrative, in skilful imitation, or the accidental 
turn of conversation, the dramatic appears, and we have 
only to look and listen objectively, to find the scene 
and the dialogue " as good as a play." Almost every 
community has its self-elected buffoons, its volunteer 
harlequins, and its involuntary actors, who, carried away 
by the spur of vanity or the overflow of enthusiasm, 
vividly represent either the ludicrous, the characteristic, 
or the impassioned in human nature. To the imagina- 
tive, observant, and susceptible, " all the world 's a stage," 
and men and women " merely players " ; or, rather, 
there are times when the aspects of society thus impress 
us. There is, too, a dramatic instinct in the very con- 
sciousness of imaginative and impassioned natures, who, 
to use the words of a woman of genius, yield to " un 



224 ACTORS. 

besoin inne qu'elles eprouvent de dramatiser leur ex- 
istence a leurs propres yeux." A national dramatic 
language has ever been recognized in the responsive 
vivacity of the Italian manners, the theatrical bearing 
of the French, and the proud reticence of the Spaniard ; 
these traits are infinitely modified to the eye of scientific 
observation ; and are the direct and significant language 
of temperament, race, and character. It is, perhaps, 
because the elements of the dramatic art are thus uni- 
versal, that its professors are so little esteemed, unless 
of the very highest order. It is certainly true of most 
of the celebrated performers that they have been un- 
happy, and averse to their children adopting the voca- 
tion. 

To appreciate the significance of elocutionary art, we 
have but to consider that all poetry and rhetoric need 
interpretation. To the multitude, in its printed or writ- 
ten form, the word of genius is often as much a sealed 
book as the notes of a fine musical composition to one 
uninitiated as to the meaning of those occult signs of 
harmony. Wordsworth gained many converts to his 
poetical theory by the impressive manner in which he 
recited his verses, who would have remained insensible 
to their worth if only the force of reasoning had been 
used. The popularity of many English lyrics and dra- 
matic scenes is owing to the emphasis given them, in 
the memory, by felicitous declaimers. How diflTerent is 
the Church Service, an old ballad, an oration, the senti- 
ment of Tennyson, the chivalry of Campbell, or the 
ardent gloom of Byron, when melodiously and intelli- 
gently uttered : only those who really feel the sense or 
pathos of a poem, win others adequately to receive it ; 
and there now lie neglected heaps of noble verse, the 



ACTORS. 225 

latent music of which has -not been vocally eliminated. 
In this view, the requisite combination of voice, sensibil- 
ity, and intelligence that constitute a good elocutionist 
is an endowment of inestimable value. Lee, the dram- 
atist, used to read his plays so effectively that it dis- 
couraged the actors from undertaking them ; and the 
crowds that listen attentively to an able reader of Shak- 
speare, indicate the extent of public taste for this unap- 
preciated and rarely cultivated accomplishment. Kean 
gave " a local habitation," in the minds of thousands, 
to Shaksperian inspiration ; his surviving auditors are 
yet haunted by his tones; his inflections and empha- 
sis sculptured, as it were, with a breath, upon memory, 
words that had previously left only a transient impres- 
sion. Had we, in our Western civilization, a profession 
analogous to the improvisatore of the South, or the 
story-teller of the East, to make famihar and impres- 
sive the utterance of our poets, they need not fear com- 
parison with the ancient bards of the people. Tasso 
and Ariosto are read to this day, in squares and on 
quays in Italy, to swarthy and tattered groups, who 
applaud a good line as if it were a new candidate for 
fame ; and, notwithstanding the aversion of the highly 
intellectual to the theatre, Shakspeare became domesti- 
cated in the English mind through the interpretation of 
histrionic genius. It is on account of this vital connec- 
tion between literature and elocution, this absolute need 
of a popular exposition of what otherwise would never 
penetrate the common mind, that the decadence of the 
Stage is to be regretted, and the recognition of elocution 
as a high, graceful, and useful art is desirable. We 
have an abundance of critics; we need expositors, 
artists to embody in clear, emphatic, and justly modu- 
15 



226 ACTORS. 

la ted tones, the graces and the thoughts which minstrel 
and philosopher have elaborated ; this would awaken 
moral sympathy, give a social interest to the pleasures 
of literature, and wing words of truth and beauty over 
the world. It is in view of such an office that the actor 
rises to dignity ; and that such a " great simple being " 
as Mrs. Siddons, was consoled, when insulted by an 
audience, for her " consciousness of a humiliating voca- 
tion ; " and that Kean, wayward and dissolute, recklessly 
leaping the barrier of civilization, like Freneau's Indian 
boy who ran from college to the woods, reappears to 
the fancy as a genuine minister at the altar of human- 
ity. Talma's life was coincident with some of the 
greatest events of the century ; and his social position is 
a noble vindication of histrionic grenius in alliance with 
superior character. Associated with the literary men 
of his country, and befriended by her statesmen, his 
reminiscences were quite as interesting as his profes- 
sional triumphs. Intimate with Chenier, David, and 
Danton, he was admired and cherished by Napoleon. 
Like Kean his earliest attempts failed, and like Garrick 
he was a reformer in his art. The philosophy of dra- 
matic personation as regarded by such a man has a 
peculiar interest. "Acting," he said, " is a complete par- 
adox ; we must possess the power of strong feeling, or 
we could never command and carry with us the sympa- 
thy of a mixed audience in a crowded theatre ; but we 
must, at the same time, control our sensations on the 
stage, for their indulgence would enfeeble execution. 
The skilful actor calculates his effects beforehand ; the 
voice, gesture, and look which pass for inspiration, have 
been rehearsed a hundred times. On the other hand, a 
dull, composed, phlegmatic nature can never make a 



ACTORS. 227 

great actor." Talma's introduction of Kemble's toga 
in the Roman plays, his teaching Bonaparte to play- 
king, according to the famous on-dit, liis matchless dig- 
nity and elocution, his English affinities, his charming 
talk, his select circle of friends, his prosperous style of 
living, and the new rank he gave his vocation, combine 
to endear and elevate his memory. 

In an historical view the relation of actors to society, 
art, letters, and religion, offers many curious problems : 
proteges of the State in the palmy days of Greece, with 
the purely secular interest attached to the stage under 
the Romans, it degenerated ; yet Cicero profited by the 
instructions of Roscius, and gained for him an impor- 
tant suit ; and while Augustus decreed that " players 
were exempt from stripes," later edicts declared, " that 
no senators should enter the houses of pantomimes, and 
that Roman knights should not attend them in the 
streets." Excommunicated by the Church of Rome in 
the Middle Ages, they gave vital scope and character to 
Spanish literature by evoking the rich and national ma- 
terials of that extraordinary drama of which Calderon 
and Lope de Vega are the permanent expositors. Its 
history shows how, from religious comedies to historical 
and social plays, the representatives of the stage in 
Spain fostered her intellectual development and only 
popular culture, " until there was hardly a village that 
did not possess some kind of a theatre." The actors at 
Madrid " constituted no less than forty companies," and 
" secular comedies of a very equivocal complexion were 
represented in some of the principal monasteries of the 
kingdom." The conduct of the Spanish actors, how- 
ever, according to the same testimony,* " did more than 
* Ticknor's Spanish Literature. 



228 ACTORS. 

anything else to endanger the privileges of the drama." 
Their personal lot seems to have been as hard as tliQ 
worst of their successors ; " slaves in Algiers were bet- 
ter off." In France, political, social, and literary life 
and labor are often so related to or influenced by the 
renowned artistes of the stage, that they figure as an 
inevitable element in popular memoirs ; nowhere is the 
influence of the profession so direct and absolute ; and 
while the rise of German literature and liberalism is 
identified with the advent of dramatic genius and the 
national revival of the theatre, in England the most 
distinctive and pervading glory of her intellectual char- 
acter and fame is the offspring of this form of letters 
and this phase of social recreative art. The biogra- 
phies of the most celebrated and endeared authors, from 
Alfieri to Irving, and from Goethe to Wilson, indicate 
that dramatic entertainments, whether Italian opera or 
the English stage in its prime, court-plays at Weimar, 
or Terry at Edinburgh, are to them the most available 
recuperative and inspiring of pastimes. 

It is alike instructive and amusing to trace the dra- 
matic element, so instinctive and versatile, from the nat- 
ural language of races and individuals, through social 
manners to its organized culmination in art ; and thus 
to realize its historical significance. The Greek drama 
has afforded philosophical scholars the most inspiring 
theme whereby to illustrate the culture of classic antiq- 
uity. In the mellifluous verses of Metastasio, the stern 
emphasis of Alfieri, and the comedies of Goldoni, we 
have a perfect reflection of the lyrical taste, the free 
aspiration, and the colloquial geniality of the Italians. 
From Moliere to Scribe what vivid and true pictures of 
human life and nature as modified by French charac- 



ACTORS. 229 

ter ; while the essential facts of the origin and devel- 
opment of the British stage, so fully recorded by Dr. 
Doran, brings it into intimate and sympathetic contact 
with all the phases and crises of literature, society, and 
politics. In the days of the first Charles the stage 
"suffered with the throne and the church." Around 
Blackfriars, Whitefriars, the Globe, the Rose, Drury 
Lane, Covent Garden, and the Haymarket, crystallize 
the most salient associations of court and authorship ; 
on this vantage-ground Puritan and Cavalier alternately 
triumphed ; and the genius of England bore its con- 
summate flower in Shakspeare. Now denounced and 
now cherished, to-day patronized by kings, and to-mor- 
row denounced by clergy, the memoirs and annals of 
each ei30ch include the fortunes and the fame of the 
drama as one of the most suggestive tests of social 
transitions. Queen Henrietta was "well-affected to- 
wards plays," while South vigorously assailed, and Bos- 
suet consigned their personators to the infernal regions. 
The play-houses declared a public nuisance by the 
Middlesex grand jury of 1700, at an earlier and later 
period were shrines of fashion, nurseries of talent, and 
haunts of courtiers. The representative men and wo- 
men of the day were dramatic authors, actors, and act- 
resses ; each succeeding generation of poets essayed in 
this arena, so that a familiar designation of the ages is 
borrowed from their leading playwrights, whose works 
faithfully mirror the moral tone, the social spirit, and 
the public taste. In Alphra Behn's " Oronooko," Mrs. 
Centlivres' " Busy-Body," Addison's " Cato," Steele's 
"Tender Husband," Dr. Young's "Revenge," Gay's 
" Beggar's Opera," Sheridan's " School for Scandal," 
Goldsmith's " She Stoops to Conquer," Rowe's " Jane 



230 ACTORS. 

Shore," Farquliar's "Beaux* Stratagem," and many 
other popular plays, we have, as it were, the living voice 
of ideas, passions, and sentiments which agitated or 
charmed the town ; and the robust, earnest individual- 
ity of the English race forever lives in the profound, 
impassioned utterance of the old dramatists, as its emas- 
culated tone is embodied in the comic muse of the Res- 
toration. How vivid the glimpses of stage influence in 
the memoirs and correspondence of each era, in the art 
and the annals of the nation. Evelyn and Pepys note 
Betterton's triumphs ; Tillotson learned from him his 
effective elocution ; Kneller painted, and Pope loved 
him. The " Tatler " comments on " haughty George 
Powell " ; Jack Lacy still lives in his portrait at Hamp- 
ton Court. " The great Mrs. Barry " is buried in West- 
minster cloisters ; and Mrs. Pritchard's bust looms up 
from among those of poets and statesmen in the Abbey, 
and recalls Churchill's metrical tribute. Burke, John- 
son, Walpole, and Chesterfield, expatiate on Garrick 
with critical zest or personal sympathy. Each great 
performer creates an epoch of taste or fashion, feeling 
or fame. Betterton, Quin, Barry, Foote, Cibber, Gar- 
rick, Kemble, Cooke, and Kean, are names whose men- 
tion brings to mind not a transient histrionic reputation, 
but a reign, a social, literary, or national period, crowded 
with interesting characters, remarkable achievements, or 
special traits of life and manners.^ Each theatre has its 
memorable traditions ; each school its great illustrators ; 
audiences, criticisms, the court, the coffee-house, the 
journal, derive from and impart to the theatre a specific 
influence. The gallantry, the wit, the local manners, the 
style of writing, the fashion that prevail at a given 
period, are associated with the stage, the annals whereof. 



ACTORS. 231 

whether in Paris, London, or Vienna, are therefore in- 
vakiable as a reference to historian, novelist, and artist. 
" The Garrick fever," we are told, " extended to St. Pe- 
tersburg " ; " a dissenting, one-eyed jeweller " in George 
Barnwell, brought the domestic di'ama into vogue ; the 
" Beggar's Opera " " made highwaymen fashionable," 
and Ross is still remembered in Edinburgh " as the 
founder of the legal stage." 

There is this great difference between the British and 
the French stage, that while the former has achieved 
the grandest triumphs of tragic genius, both literary 
and histrionic, the comedy of the latter has proved a 
permanent school of manners, of language, and of art. 
The patronage of the government, and the most strict 
artistic methods and discipline, have established a stand- 
ard of acting through the Theatre Fran9ais. Accord- 
ingly, instead of one superlatively clever and a score of 
inefficient performers, all the French actors and ac- 
tresses work together for a harmonious result ; unity of 
art and of effect, exquisite finish, scientific aptitude, 
graces of manner, of utterance, and of expression, often 
combine to make the modern French drama the per- 
fection of artificial triumphs. 

The lyric drama has greatly diminished the influence 
and modified the character of the stage ; and its per- 
sonal records and associations abound in romantic and 
artistic triumphs. The rare and delicate gifl of a voice 
adapted to this sphere, the temperament, talent, and 
beauty of the queens of song, the individuality and 
power of musical composition, the vast expense and 
varied attractions of the Italian opera, its fashionable 
sway, and the genius and social interest identified with 
its history, all combine to throw a special and significant 



232 ACTORS. 

charm around its votaries and its record. What a world 
of emotional and artistic meaning the very names of 
Purcell, Pergolesi, Bach, Cherubini, Mozart, and Rossini, 
Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, Beethoven, Mercandante, and 
other eminent composers, awakens ; and how the mem- 
ory of their great interpreters haunts the imagination ! 
Perhaps, in our material age, there is no sphere where 
fancy and feeling have found such scope. From the me- 
moirs of Alfieri to those of our own Irving, it is evident 
that the most available of inspiring recreations, for men 
of thought and sensibility, is the lyric drama ; and from 
the days of Metastasio at the court of Vienna, to those 
of Felice Romani's libretto of " La Norma," words and 
melody have reproduced, in vivid and vital grace, the 
tragic and the naive in history, sentiment, and life. 
Even around imperial careers flit the vocal victors of 
the hour. Joseph of Austria, the great Frederic, and 
the first Napoleon, had their authoritative or concilia- 
tory skirmishes with a prima donna, or an impresario ; 
operatic alternate with diplomatic episodes. Nor is 
the social charm and prestige of the lyric drama less 
apparent in the annals of kindred genius. At Sophia 
Arnould's salon the illustrious writers and statesmen of 
Paris gladly convened. Goethe celebrated in verse the 
eighty-third birthday of Mara. Sir Joshua painted 
Mrs. Billington as St. Cecilia ; and Catalani made Eng- 
lish tars, rowing her to a frigate, weep as she warbled 
the national anthem. The amours, rivalries, luxury, 
disasters, adventures, courtly favor, social influence, con- 
jugal quarrels, noble charities, and artistic triumphs, of 
vocalists, add a new and marvellous chapter to the an- 
nals of dramatic character and fortunes. Lavinia Fan- 
ton's " Polly Peachum " secured the triumph of Gay's 



ACTORS. 233 

« Beggar's Opera," and the heart of a duke ; of kindred 
significance is that scene, so exceptional in English con- 
ventional life, and well described by Dr. Burney, where 
Anastasia Robinson was acknowledged by Lord Peter- 
borough as his wife. A cardinal and a cook were the 
parents of GabrielU ; Pasta's "Medea" was an epoch 
in histrionic art ; Malibran's brief and brilliant career 
revealed the most versatile woman, as well as original 
cantatrice of her day; Sontag's death was a public 
calamity ; Catalani's marvellous vocalization lacked pa- 
thos, because " she had not suffered ; " while Mrs.Woods 
gained the same quality from a contrary experience. 
Madame Devrient was called the Siddons of Germany ; 
Jenny Lind's naive song won thousands for the indi- 
gent ; and Braham's triumphant tones in singing the 
triumphs of Israel, made the audience appear to Lamb, 
as Egyptians over whose necks the Hebrew chanter 
rode. 

From the time Burbage was lessee of the Globe The- 
atre, and Shakspeare performed in his own characters, 
the morality of an actor's profession and the stage have 
been discussed ; but that there is no inevitable degrada- 
tion in the theatre, is evident from the late wholly sue 
cessful though temporary revival of its glory under the 
auspices of Macready ; by magnificent and complete 
scenic arrangements, the restoration of mutilated Shak- 
spearian dramas, efficient companies, the reformation of 
the house itself, and especially by combining with the 
best dramatic authors of the day, and rigidly maintain- 
ing his own self-respect as a member of society, Ma- 
cready once more brought together the scattered ele- 
ments upon which the character and utility of the stage 
is based, invested it with the highest interest, and raised 



234 ACTORS. 

it above the cavils both of severe intellectual taste and 
of pure morality. For a brief period it was the centre 
of graceful ministries, a high school of art, the hand- 
maid of literature, and the means of elevating public 
sentiment and refreshing the most toilsome minds; 
works of real dramatic genius were elicited ; latent 
artistic resources suggested ; and the noblest drama in 
the world adequately represented. Financial difficul- 
ties, incident to the monopoly enjoyed by patentees, 
soon put a stop to the laudable enterprise ; but the ex- 
periment is as memorable as it was satisfactory. Ronzi 
shed tears of pleasure when she found herself the only 
guest at a nobleman's villa near Florence to which she 
had been invited to a fete sumptuously and tastefully 
arranged ; it was so rare an exception to the rule of 
making professional vocalists contribute to, instead of 
receiving, private entertainment ; and it is a curious 
fact, in the social history of theatrical characters, that 
the English, notwithstanding their prudery and exclu- 
siveness, first recognized actors and actresses of merit 
as companions. Miss Farren is not the only performer 
married to one of the nobility. The Earl of Craven 
espoused Miss Bromton ; Lord Peterborough, Anastasia 
Robinson ; a nephew of Lord Thurlow, Miss Bolton ; 
and Sir William Becher, Miss O'Neil. One can read- 
ily understand how an intellectual bachelor like James 
Smith, accustomed to solace himself for domestic priva- 
tions by cultivating a sympathy for the heroines of the 
mimic world, should lament, as he did, in apt verse, 
their appropriation even by noble lovers. He closes a 
pathetic record of the kind with this allusion to the 
union between his prime favorite. Miss Stevens, and 
Lord Essex, who seems to have acted on the advice of 



ACTORS. 235 

the author of " Matrimonial Maxims," who says, " If 
you marry an actress, the singing-girls are the best " : 

" Last of the dear, delightful list, 
Most followed, Avonder'd at, and miss'd 

In Hymen's odds and evens; — 
Old Essex caged our nightingale, 
And finished thy dramatic tale, 
Enchanting Kitty Stevens! " 

Boswell's reason for his partiality to players and sol- 
diers was that they excelled " in animation and relish 
of existence." There is a striking illustration of the 
personal sympathy awakened by the profession in con- 
flict with the judgment that condemns it, as a career, in 
the life of Scott. On one of the last days of Sir Wal- 
ter's life, when in a bath-chair at Abbotsford, he was 
wheeled to a shady place by Lockhart and Laidlaw, he 
asked the former to read him something from Crabbe. 
Lockhart read the description of the arrival of the 
Players at the Borough. Sir Walter cried " Capital ! " 
at the poet's sarcasms on that way of life, but asked 
penitently, " How will poor Terry endure those cuts?" 
and when Lockhart reached the summing up — 

" Sad, happy race ! soon raised and soon depressed, 
Your days all past in jeopardy and jest; 
Poor without prudence, with afflictions, vain. 
Not warned by misery, nor enriched by gain " 

« Shut the book," said Scott ; " I can't stand more of 
this : it will touch Terry to the quick." A different but 
sio-nificant tribute to the actual personal worth of the 
profession occurs in one of those genial "imaginary 
conversations," vital with reality of reminiscence and 
rhapsody, wherein Christopher North and the Ettrick 
Shepherd discourse so memorpbly. The conduct of 
Kean in appearing on the stage immediately after a 



236 ACTORS. 

scandalous intrigue had become public, is reprobated by 
" Tickler " as " an insult to humanity " ; to which the 
Shepherd replies : " A¥hat can ye expec' frae a play- 
actor ? " " What can I expect, James ? " is the reply ; 
" Why, look at Terry, Young, Matthews, Charles Kem- 
ble, and your friend VandenhofF; and then I say that 
you expect good players to be good men as men go ; 
and likewise gentlemen." 

This sympathy with the profession, and vivid interest 
in some phase or period of the drama, is an almost uni- 
versal fact in the experience of intelligent and sensitive 
persons. Thackeray's picture of Pendennis enamored 
of an actress in boyhood, is typical of a common epi- 
sode of youth ; if not in this form it takes the shape of 
enthusiasm for a certain actor or class of plays, or a 
mania defined as the condition of beino^ " sta^e-struck " ; 
while to the philosophical as well as sympathetic of 
these early votaries, the literature of the drama is a 
perennial storehouse of psychological data, and the 
most vital connecting link between written lore and ac- 
tual life — the source of the highest poetry and the most 
universal human truth. 

In literary biography, the accounts of the manner in 
which the plays of Goldsmith, Sheridan, Byron, Mrs. 
Hemans, Joanna Baillie, Procter, Talfourd, Hunt, Lamb, 
and other poets, were brought on the stage, — the re- 
ciprocal good offices of actors and authors — mutually 
acknowledged, the array of intellectual friends convened 
to grace the occasion, and the anecdotes and criticism 
thence resulting — form some of the most agreeable 
episodes in literary biography. Farquhar, Holcraft, Mrs. 
Inchbald, Knowles, and others, combined the author and 
actor ; and it was a genial and noble custom for distin- 



ACTORS. 237 

guislied writers to contribute prologues and epilogues ; 
— the interchange of such kindly offices gave, as we 
have said, a wide and elevated social interest to the the- 
atre which had, in a great measure, passed away before 
the advent of Kean. Besides the comparative indiffer- 
ence of the public, he was obliged to contend against 
both the prejudices and the refinements of taste — the 
one opposing all innovation as to style, and the other 
repudiating the intensity and boldness of his concep- 
tions. 

The Spagnoletto style of Sandford, and the " cord- 
age " visible in old Mackliii's face, are traditional. The 
inimitable pathos of Miss O'Neil, the tragic beauty of 
Pasta, the heroic manner of Siddons, the irresistible 
hun\or of Matthews, and Liston's comic genius, had 
each their distinctive character ; they respectively indi- 
vidualized the art, and, if we range over the entire gal- 
lery of histrionic celebrities, we shall find their fame 
based upon as peculiar traits of excellence as that of 
renowned authors and painters ; and their genius con- 
sisting in some quality emphatically their own — where 
imitation and art became subservient to, or illustrative 
of, an idiosyncrasy. 

Impulsive genius seldom receives the credit of artistic 
study, and its most effective points are often ascribed to 
chance inspiration. This is an error of frequent occur- 
rence in judging of actors ; and it is one almost per- 
versely indulged by the bigoted opponents of the ro- 
mantic or natural school. The most effective touches, 
however, in Garrick, Kean, and other eminent perform- 
ers, are easily traced to careful observation or a personal 
idiosyncrasy or association. In the very first instruc- 
tion the latter received in his art, recourse was had to 



238 ACTORS. 

natural sympathy in order to perfect his imitative skill. 
The pathetic intonation with which, even as a boy, he 
exclaimed, " Alas, poor Yorick ! " in Hamlet, was de- 
rived from the manner in which he habitually spoke of 
an unfortunate relative who constantly excited his com- 
miseration ; he was instructed to transfer the tone awak- 
ened by real to the expression of imaginary grief: his 
manner of falling on his face was derived from the fig- 
ure on Abercrombie's monument, and his fighting with 
a weaponless arm in Richard was borrowed from the 
death-scene of an officer in Spain. The play of Ber- 
tram, by Maturin, he is said to have rendered memora- 
ble by a single touching benison : all who once heard 
his " God bless the child," recall it with emotion ; it was 
a favorite mode of uttering his paternal tenderness at 
home ; hence its reality. Garrick made a study of an 
old crazy friend of his in order to enact Lear with truth 
to nature ; and when Kean was playing in New York, 
he accompanied his physician to Bloomingdale asylum 
for the express purpose of obtaining hints for the same 
part, from the manner and expression of the insane pa- 
tients. Indeed, those most intimate wdtli Kean in his 
best days, unite in the opinion that he was never sur- 
passed for the intense and original study of his charac- 
ters-; he brooded over them in the quiet fields, observed 
life and nature, conversed with discerning men, and 
acutely examined books and his own consciousness, for 
the purpose of attaining an harmonious and artistic con- 
ception ; he tried experiments in elocution before his 
wife, and was in the habit of rehearsing, for hours, with- 
out any auditor. So elaborate were his studies, that, 
having once decided on a course, he never modified it 
without great self-dissatisfaction, and on one occasion, 



ACTORS. 239 

when he yielded his judgment, on a special point, to 
please Mrs. Garrick, the inharmonious effect was obvi- 
ous to all. 

" What the bank is to the credit of the nation," said 
Steele, " the playhouse is to its politeness and good 
manners." And although this maxim is scarcely appli- 
cable now, the instinct and the sympathy by virtue of 
which the stage instructs and refines, forever obtain in 
humanity. Among recent illustrations, is the genial in- 
fluence of dramatic pastimes upon the isolated and dark 
sojourn of ice-bound Arctic voyagers, as described by 
the intrepid and philosophic Kane and his predecessors. 
The gallery of human portraits, conserved even by the 
minor English drama, are among the most genuine il- 
lustrations of life and character ; Sir Peter Teazle and 
Joseph Surface, Sir Pertinax and Tony Lumpkin, Syl- 
vester Daggerwood and Mawworm, are emphatic types 
with which we could ill dispense. One of the remark- 
able intellectual phenomena of the age in which we 
live, however, is the gradual encroachment of literature 
upon dramatic art. The best modern characters which 
genius has created exist in masterpieces of fiction and 
poetry ; in a measure they have superseded in popular 
favor dramatic ideals, except the highest and most en- 
deared. Scott, Dickens, and their contemporaries or 
successors, have given the world a new gallery of living 
portraits such as of old were only to be found in the 
drama. Well said Wilson in the " Noctes " : "I think 
the good novels that are published, come in place of 
new dramas." The Italian opera has by its affluent ar- 
tistic attractions, overshadowed, and in a great measure 
superseded, the " legitimate drama." Even in Italy the 
opportunity is comparatively rare to enjoy fine acting 



240 ACTORS. 

apart from music and the ballet ; yet there is no better 
lesson for the novice in that " soft bastard Latin " that 
Byron loved, than to listen to one of Goldoni's old- 
fashioned colloquial plays as clearly and with admirable 
emphasis, recited by such a company as that of which 
Internari was so long the ornament ; by melodious em- 
phasis alone commonplace maxims seemed to attain the 
sparkle of wit ; and the mere tone of voice is fraught 
with infectious merriment. From Arlechino's broad 
jokes to Ristori's majestic pathos, the natural dramatic 
instinct and endowments of the Italians, awaken every 
shade and subtlety of sympathetic feeling. 

Philosophically examined, the stage will be found a 
compensatory institution, and its actual relation to so- 
ciety intimate or conventional, according to the pre- 
dominance of real or ideal satisfaction. Thus the free 
enterprise and speculative range in America makes 
it merely recreative ; the best Italian dramatist wrote 
when his country's civic life was paralyzed. The senti- 
ment checked by caste and absolutism in Elizabeth's 
day, burst forth in the old dramatists, and culminated, 
for all time, in Shakspeare; while the memoirs of 
Goethe, Schiller, and Korner indicate how near and 
dear to the popular heart of their country was the art 
in all its phases and forms, wherein baffled aspirations 
found scope. The histrionic artists of Germany, and 
the actresses of Paris, are or have been a vital element 
of the social economy, impracticable and almost incon- 
ceivable to English and Americans. " Wilhelm Meis- 
ter " is the legitimate romance of its country and era. 
" L' artiste aimee du public," says Madame Dudevant, 
" est comme un enfant a qui 1' univers est la famille," 
while the affinity of the dramatic instinct with literary 



ACTORS. 241 

culture and capability is not only evident in the friend- 
ships between authors and actors, but in the facility 
with which the former become amateur performers. 
Montaigne says, " I played the chief part in the Latin 
tragedies of Buchanan, Guerente, and Moret, that were 
acted in our college of Guienne." Dickens is a capital 
actor and dramatic reader of his own stories ; and 
Washington Irving, when sojourning at Dresden, de- 
lectably enacted, in a genial family circle, Sir Charles 
Rackett. 

One proof of the essential individuality of histrionic 
genius, is that in every celebrated part each renowned 
actor seems to have excelled in a different phrase. 
Garrick's Hamlet was inimitable in the words, " I have 
that within that passeth show ; " while the most af- 
fecting touch of the elder AYallack was " That undis- 
covered country from whose bourne no traveller re- 
turns." Kean's first soliloquy in Richard is perhaps 
the best preserved traditional recitation of the Enghsh 
stage ; and the power of contrasted intonation in the 
expression of feeling, never forgotten by those who 
listened, was evinced in the memorable passage in 
Othello — 

" Perdition catch my soul but 7 do love thee, 
And when I love thee not, chaos is come again." 

His conceptions were remarkable for bold earnestness. 
His discordant voice, insignificant figure, and slightly 
misshaped feet, seemed to pass miraculously away before 
the glowing energy of his spirit ; to the imaginative 
spectator he visibly expanded, and filled the stage, and 
towered over the inferior actors of larger physical di- 
mensions ; his action, expression of countenance, intel- 
ligent emphasis, and vigor of utterance, lifted, kindled, 
16 



242 ACTORS. 

and glorified, as it were, his merely human attributes, 
and bore him, and those who gazed and listened, trium- 
phantly onward in a whirl of passion, a concentration 
of will, or a chaos of emotion. 

As far as contemporary memoirs elucidate the sub- 
ject, it is evident that gross violations of elocutionary 
taste were habitual both prior to and succeeding the 
time of Betterton. This actor, with remarkable physi- 
cal disadvantages, appears to have had the most decided 
genius — especially for tragedy ; we have no accounts 
of the effects of tragic personation exceeding those re- 
corded of Betterton ; so truly did he feel the emotion 
represented that it is said his color, breathing, accent, 
and looks betrayed an incessant and absolute sympathy 
with the part ; as Hamlet he turned deadly pale at the 
sight of the ghost, and Gibber emphatically declares 
that his tone, accentuation, and the whole management 
of his voice were faultlessly adapted to each passage he 
recited. Garrick seems first to have established a taste 
for the refinements of the art ; his style, compared to 
what had been in vogue, was singularly chaste ; he 
embodied the great idea of unity ; and when he first 
appeared, his manner, expression of countenance, in- 
flection of voice, and whole air instantly revealed the 
character, of which he did not lose sight for a moment. 
The Kemble school has been traced to Quin; but its 
individuality was trenched upon vitally by Kean, al- 
though it has been, in many essential features, renewed 
by the elder Vandenhoff and Macready. It is con- 
tended by its ardent votaries that Kean sacrificed the 
dignity of his art — so ably sustained by John Kemble 
and his renowned sister, to mere eflfect ; that he substi- 
tuted unpulse for science, and excited sympathy by pow- 



ACTORS, 243 

erful but illegitimate appeals to emotion. This, how- 
ever, is a narrow statement, and like the old dispute 
about Racine and Shakspeare, the classic and romantic, 
the natural and the artistic — resolves itself into the 
fact that the principle of a division of labor is applica- 
ble to art as well as social economy. In Cato and Cori- 
olanus and Wolsey, the traits of Kemble were perfectly 
assimilated ; in the more complex part of Richard the 
Third, and the more impetuous one of Othello, the en- 
ergy, quickness, intense expression, and infectious action 
of Kean were not only electrical in their immediate ef- 
fect, but appropriate in the highest degree in the view 
of reflection and taste. Thus, too, Cooke, as Sir Per- 
tinax McSycophant, Mrs. Siddons as Lady Macbeth, 
Cooper as Virginius, Kean as Shylock, Macready as 
Werner, and Booth as lago, made indelible because 
highly characteristic impressions. The actor, like the 
author and artist, has h\& forte — a sphere peculiarly fit- 
ted to elicit his powers and give scope and inspiration 
to his genius ; and it is here that we should estimate 
him, and not according to a comparative and irrelevant 
standard. 

The lives of actors partake of the extreme alterna- 
tions and varied excitement of their profession. To the 
philosopher there is nothing anomalous in the frequent 
contrast between the lessons of virtue they enact and 
the recklessness of their habits. When we consider 
how much they are the sport of fortune, and how often 
poverty and contempt form the background to the pict- 
ure of love, triumph, or wit in which they figure ; and 
remember the constant draft upon nervous sensibility 
and the resources of temperament, as well as intelli- 
gence, it is their lot to undergo, we cannot reasonably 



244 ACTORS. 

wonder that extravagances of conduct, vagaries of habit, 
and a proneness to seek pleasure in the immediate, char- 
acterize players. " Players," says Hazlett, " are the only 
honest hypocrites." It is proved by judicial statistics, 
that " of all classes they are the freest from crime " ; 
while their- charitable sympathies are proverbial ; in 
marriage and finance, however, they are the reverse of 
precisians ; yet few more pleasing examples of domestic 
virtue and happiness can be found than some recorded 
in histrionic memoirs. A kindly but acute observer 
who long fraternized with the craft, Douglas Jerrold, 
said of the strolling player : " He is the merry preacher 
of the noblest, grandest lessons of human thought. He 
is the poet's jDilgrim, and in the forlornest by-ways and 
abodes of men, calls forth new sympathies, sheds upon 
the cold, dull trade of real life an hour of jDoetic glory. 
He informs human clay with thoughts and throbbings 
that refine it ; and for this, he was for centuries a 
' rogue and a vagabond,' and is, even now, a long, long 
day's march from the vantage-ground of respectability." 
Through the annals of the English stage there may be 
traced a vein of romantic vicissitude as suggestive as 
any the written drama affords : — Wilks, generous and 
spirited, abandoning a profitable engagement in Dublin, 
with language as noble in its key as one of Fletcher's 
characters, to allay the conjugal jealousy of a brother 
actor ; Nell Gwinn discouraged in her theatrical ambi- 
tion by the manager, becoming orange-girl to the thea- 
tre in order to be in the line of her aspirations, which, 
when realized, made her the mistress of a king and the 
envy of courtiers ; Mountfort, killed in an impromptu 
duel with a noble rival for the love of Mrs. Bracegir- 
dle ; the charming Mrs. Woffington disguised as a man, 



ACTORS. 245 

at a country ball, undeceiving the affianced of her dis- 
loyal lover ; the beautiful Miss Bellamy meditating sui- 
cide on the steps of Westminster Bridge ; Savage asleep 
on a street-bunk, and, three days after, the admired 
guest at a lord's table ; the eccentricities of Gibber's 
daft daughter ; Holcraft's affecting story of his boyhood, 
and the ludicrous self-importance displayed in his ac- 
count of his trial for treason ; the fascinatins^ dialosfue 
of the benevolent Mrs. Jordan with the Quaker in the 
rain under a shed ; Jerrold's father jDlaying in a barn 
upon an estate that was rightfully his own ; and Doug- 
las himself, the future dramatic author, carried on the 
stage by Kean, as the child in Rolla. Palmer fell dead 
while personating " The Stranger," in consequence of 
the excess of sorrow which the situation induced, he 
having just been stricken by" a great domestic bereave- 
ment ; Williams was killed by Quin ; and Mountford 
and Clive murdered. Quin's memorable jokes, Cooke's 
lapses from more than Roman dignity and Anglo-Saxon 
sense, to a worse than Indian sottishness ; Grimaldi, 
whom Hook called " the Garrick of Clowns," and to 
whom Byron gave a silver snuff-box, leaving buffoonery 
and harlequin whirls to train pigeons, collect flies, or 
meet with London robbers ; Matthews, after keeping 
the Park audience in a roar for hours, crossing the river 
to stroll in pensive thought under the trees at Hoboken ; 
and the versatile and admired Hodgkinson dying at a 
solitary tavern on the road to Washington, amid the 
horrors of pestilence, and his body thrown into a field 
by slaves ; Booth's extraordinary fits of contemplative 
originality, and the grotesque night-adventures in which 
Kean was the leader, are but incidental glimpses of a 
world in which the violent, fantastic, and reckless in- 



246 ACTORS. 

stincts of human nature are wantonly displayed, yield- 
ing curious material for the metaphysician, and ample 
scope for charity. An English poet has brought to- 
gether many such anecdotes of Kean, — some touching, 
in the highest degree, some suj^erlatively ridiculous, and 
others shocking to the heart, — yet all kindled with the 
forlorn glory of genius, like the scathed form of Milton's 
fallen angel. And what a mercurial compound was 
Samuel Foote, London's great source of fun and satire 
for years,— whose chance observations became proverbs, 
who used to find a seat for Gray the poet, stand ruefully 
against the scenes to have his artificial leg attached, and 
then go forward to set the house in a roar, — as ingen- 
ious as Steele in evading " injunctions," who lived by 
his " takings off," over which the grave Johnson shook 
with merriment, and whose " wits " were literally his 
capital, whereby he realized three fortunes ! It is no 
wonder people frequented Macklin's ordinary when he 
quit the stage ; nor that they listened until far into the 
night to that " perpetual showman of the extraordinary 
in manners, adventure, sentimentality, and sin," — Ellis- 
ton, — whose " I '11 never call you Jack, my boy, again," 
equalled in comic zest the tragic force of Kean's " God 
bless the child," in " Bertram," who made life itself a 
comedy, and played the " child of fortune " to the end ; 
exuberant in vagaries, a vagabond by instinct, celebrat- 
ing " the triumph of abstinence by excess," and with 
" eccentricity absolutely germain to his being," yet could 
so perfectly enact the " regal style " in common life, that 
Charles Lamb declared he should " rej^ose under no in- 
scription but one of pure Latinity." The " Memoirs of 
Grimaldi " was the first book Dickens published, and in 
that biography of a harlequin are the smiles and tears 



ACTORS. 247 

of a genuine romance. In the perusal of such an ex- 
perience, we realize how directly comedy springs from 
human life ; the piazzas of Spain and Italy, with their 
motley crowds and glib dialogue, gave birth to the thea- 
tre. What a curious fact in human nature is the rela- 
tion of seeming to being in the drama. Dr. Shelden, 
Archbishop of Canterbury, was dining with the cele- 
brated Betterton, and said : " Pray, Mr. Betterton, in- 
form me what is the reason you actors can affect your 
audiences with speaking of things imaginary as if they 
were real, while we of the Church speak of things real 
which our congregations only receive as if they were 
imaginary." " Why, my Lord," replied the player, " the 
reason is plain. We actors speak of things imaginary 
as if they were real, and you in the pulpit speak of 
things real as if they were imaginary." It has been ob- 
served that there are no English lives worth reading 
except those of players, who, " by the nature of the 
case, have bidden Respectability good-day"; and a 
grave literary critic explains on higher ground than this 
ahandon, why there is an intrinsic charm in an actor's 
memoirs, when he remarks that " notmthstanding every- 
thing which may be said against the theatrical profes- 
sion, it certainly does require from those who pursue it, 
a certain quickness and liveliness of mind." 

The very nature of the vocation is inciting to vagrant 
propensities and thoughtless adventures. The English 
theatre originated in strollers who performed in inn- 
yards ; and the Greek drama is associated with the 
" cart of Thespis." I have seen an .itinerant company 
of Italians perform a tragedy in the old Roman amphi- 
theatre at Verona, on a spring afternoon, to a hundred 
spectators grouped about the lower tiers of that magnif- 



248 ACTORS. 

icent relic of antiquity, where gladiators once contended 
in the presence of thousands. It was an impressive 
evidence of the universality of dramatic taste, which, 
however modified by circumstances, always re-asserts 
itself in all nations and climes. The best historians, 
coonizant of this, make the condition and influence of 
the theatre a subject of record ; and its phases undoubt- 
edly mirror the characteristic in social and national life 
more truly than any other institution. It was a great 
bone of contention between the Puritans and Cavaliers ; 
Macaulay finds it needful to revert to the subject to 
illustrate the reign of Charles II. and the Common- 
wealth, and Hildreth to mark the difference of public 
sentiment in New England and the other States after 
the revolution. Its critical history in England would 
afford a reliable scale by which to measure the rise, 
progress, and lapses of civilization and public taste. 
Upon this arena the great controversy between nature 
and art, rules and inspiration, eclecticism and adherence 
to a school, which, under different names, forms an e\^r- 
lasting problem to the votaries of intellectual enjoy- 
ment, was boldly fought. And the discussion once in- 
spired by Kemble and Kean has been renewed by the 
respective advocates of Hachel and Ristori. 

The diminished influence of the stage is obvious in 
its comparative isolation. " The dramatic temperament,'* 
observes Mrs. Kemble, " always exceptional in England, 
is becoming daily more so under the various adverse 
influences of a civilization and society which fosters a 
genuine dislike to exhibitions of emotion, and a cynical 
disbelief in the reality of it, both necessarily depressing, 
first its expression, and next its existence." This social 
repudiation of the dramatic instinct undoubtedly affects 



ACTORS. ' 249 

its professional development; and the stage in Great 
Britain, of late years, with the exception of the lyric 
drama, appeals far more to the amusing than the tragic 
element ; the comic muse and the melodrama have 
long been in the ascendant. The social character 
which once rendered the stage in Eno^land a connect- 
ing link between literature and the town, refined circles 
and the public at large, no longer exists ; that such a 
relation naturally obtains we perceive in the mutual ad- 
vantages then derived from its recognition ; authors and 
actors, indeed, have a reciprocal interest in the drama, 
while the tone of society and manners is directly influ- 
enced by, and reflected from, the theatre ; much, there- 
fore, of the deterioration of the latter is owing to its 
being in a great degree abandoned by those whose 
taste, character, and personal influence alone can re- 
deem it from abuse and degradation ; for it has been 
well said that the theatre is respectable only in propor- 
tion as it is respected. A traditional charm and intel- 
lectual dignity, as well as social attractiveness, lingers 
around the memory of its palmy days ; when Quin so 
nobly befriended the author of " The Seasons ; " when 
Steele was a patentee, and Mrs. Bracegirdle inspired 
the best authors to write for her, and received a legacy 
from Congreve ; when Dr. Johnson and Goldsmith dis- 
cussed new plays and old readings with Garrick, and 
Mrs. Oldfield remembered poor Savage in her will ; 
or Sheridan vibrated between the greenroom and the 
dress circle. Similar pleasing associations belong to 
the era of Mrs. Siddons, w^hen she doffed the majestic 
air of Lady Macbeth, to mingle with the literati of Edin- 
burgh ; and nightly saw Reynolds, Gibbon, Burke, and 
Fox in the orchestra. Peg Woffington charmed Burke, 



250 ACTORS. 

and incited him to his first successful literary effort ; 
and Archbishop Tillotson profited by the elocution of 
Betterton. We are told in corresponding memoirs, of 
Kitty Clive's 'clear laugh,' 'fair Abington with her 
dove-like looks,' ' charming Mrs. Barry,' and ' womanly 
Mrs. Pritchard.' There is no vocation so directly in- 
spired by love of approbation ; the stimulus of applause 
is an indispensable encouragement, and popular caprice 
vents itself without limit m deifying or degrading the 
children of Thespis. It is not to be wondered at that 
diseased vanity often results from such adulation as 
attends the successful actor. " Is it possible," asks Sir 
Lytton, " that this man so fondled, so shouted to, so 
dandled by the world, can, at bedtime, take off the 
whole of Macbeth with his stockings ? " The old essay- 
ists criticized the stage with efficiency ; men of jDolitical 
fame watched, with interest, over its destiny ; men of 
genius proclaimed its worth, and men of birth took an 
active part in its support and direction. Thus encour- 
aged and inspired, actors of the higher order felt a 
degree of resjDonsibility to the public, and indulged in 
aspirations that gave elevation and significance to their 
art. Its evanescent triumphs, when compared with 
those of letters, painting, or sculpture, have often been 
lamented ; Gibber is eloquently pathetic on the subject, 
and Campbell has expressed the sentiment in a memo- 
rable stanza. In one respect, however, the fragility of 
histrionic renown is an advantage ; no species of enjoy- 
ment from art has been made the theme of such glowing 
reminiscence ; as if inspired by the very consciousness 
that the merit they celebrated had no permanent me- 
morial, intelligent lovers of the drama describe, in con- 
versation and literature, the traits of favorite performers 
and the effects they have produced, with a zest, acute- 



ACTORS. 251 

ness, and enthusiasm rarely awarded the votaries of 
other pursuits. "\Yliat genial emphasis, even in the 
traditional memory of TVilks' Sir Harry Wildair, Barry's 
Jaffier, Quin's FalstafF, Henderson's Sir Giles, Yates' 
Shakspeare's Fools, Macklin's Shylock, Harry Wood- 
worth's Captain Boabdil, Cooke's Mc Sycophant, Sid- 
dons' Lady Macbeth, and Kean's Othello ! Yet in no 
art is eclecticism more a desideratum ; our great actors 
proverbially suffer for adequate support in the minor 
characters ; rivalry and division of labor sadly mar the 
possible perfection of the modern stage. Walpole, who 
was an epicurean in his dramatic as in his social tastes, 
sighed for the incarnation in one prodigy of the voice 
of Mrs. Cibber, the eye of Garrick, and the soul of Mrs. 
Pritchard. In Gibber's eulogies upon the tragic gen- 
ius of Betterton, or the inimitable drollery of IS^^okes, 
— Hunt's genial memoirs of Jack Bannister, Lamb's 
account of Munden's acting, Campbell's tribute to Mrs. 
Siddons, and Barry Cornwall's description of Kean's 
characters, — there is a relish and earnestness seldom 
devoted to the limner and the bard, who, we feel, can 
speak best for themselves to posterity. Indeed, the 
heartiness of appreciation manifested by literary men 
towards great actors, is the result of natural affinity. 
There is something, too, in the mere vocation of the 
latter, w^hen efficiently realized, that excites intellect- 
ual and personal sympathy. The actor seems a noble 
volunteer in behalf of humanity, — a kind of spontane- 
ous lay-figure upon which the drapery of human life 
may be arranged at pleasure ; — he is the oral inter- 
preter of the indi\ddual mind to the hearts of the people ; 
and takes upon himself the passion, wit, and sentiment 
of types of the race, that all may realize their action and 
quality. 





NEWSPAPERS. 

" What is it but a map of busy life? " — Cowpeb. 

REMEMBER how vivid was the impression 
of Paris life, in its contrasts and economy, de- 
rived from the distribution of the " Entr' Acte " 
at the Opera Comique, announcing the death of Talley- 
rand. Cinti Damoreau had just warbled ?i finale in the 
" Pre Aux Ciercs," and the applause had scarcely died 
away, when a shower of neatly-printed gazettes were 
seized and pondered. There was a minute description 
of the last hours of a man associated with dynasties 
and diplomacy, for half a century, who had been the 
confidant of the Bourbons and the Bonapartes, and a 
few moments before bade farewell to earth and Louis 
Philippe ; and all these historical and incongurous mem- 
ories solemnized by death, filled up the interval of a 
gay and crowded opera, and the pauses of an exquisite 
vocalist ; — a more bewildering consciousness of the past 
and present, of art and history, of intrigue and melody, 
of mortality and pastime, it is difficult to imagine. 

The newspaper is not only a map but a test of the 
age; its history is parallel with civilization, and each 
new feature introduced is significant of political and 
social changes; while its tone, style, and opinions, at 
any given time, indicate the spirit of the times more 
definitely than any other index. If we scan, with a 
philosophic eye, these fugitive emanations of the press, 



NEWSPAPERS. 253 

from their earliest date to the present hour, we find that 
they not only record events, but bear indirect, and there- 
fore, authentic testimony to the transitions of society, 
the formation of opinions and the actual standards of 
public taste. Hence they are eminently characteristic 
to the annalist. Compare the single diminutive sheet, 
which, in the latter part of the sixteenth century, formed 
the London newspaper, almost wholly occupied with 
state papers and the statistics of a battle in some dis- 
tant region, with a copy of the present leading Tory 
journal in the same latitude ; the extent and variety of 
its contents, the finished rhetoric of its leading article, 
the scholarly criticism, fully reported debates, thorough 
detail of news, foreign and domestic, local and univer- 
sal, personal and social — evince how the resources of 
the world have multiplied, the refinements of life pro- 
gressed, and the intellectual demands of society risen. 
News, like all other desirable things, was, at the origin 
of newspapers, a monopoly of government ; the Gazette 
a mere instrument of courts : now the daily journal, in 
free countries, is the legitimate expression of the popu- 
lar mind; its comparative liberty of utterance is the 
criterion of political enfranchisement ; and where entire 
scope is afforded, it takes as many forms as there are 
sects, theories, and interests in a community. Thus 
from being a mere record it has become an expositor ; 
from heralding royal mandates it has grown into an 
advocate of individual sentiments ; and daguerreotypes 
civil life in its swiftly moving panorama, with incredible 
celerity and faithfulness. The improvements in the 
modern journal are chiefly owing to those in human 
intercourse. The steam-engine and the electric tele- 
graph, by rapidly concentrating the knowledge of events 



254 NEWSPAPERS. 

at central points, give both the motive and the means 
of vitality and completeness to the newspaper. A re- 
markable effect, however, of these facilities is that they 
have diminished what may be called the personal influ- 
ence of the editor, and reduced the daily journal in a 
great measure, to its normal state — that of a dispenser 
of news. The success of the newspapers, for instance, 
in the commercial metropolis of this country and also in 
London, is at the present day more the result of enter- 
prise than talent. The paper which collects the earli- 
est and most complete intelligence of passing events is 
the most successful. When these materials of interest 
were not so abundant ; when days and weeks elapsed 
between the publication of imjDortant news, the vehicle 
of this evanescent but much desired commodity, were 
kept alive by the individual talent and information of 
editors. Their views were earnestly uttered and re- 
sponded to ; and the paper was eagerly seized for the 
sake of its eloquence, its argument, or its satire. It is 
true, indeed, that a degree of this prestige still belongs 
to the daily journal ; but the eclat of the writer is now 
all but lost in the teeming interest of events ; the edi- 
tor, who, in less exciting times, would have been the 
idolized lay-preacher or improvisatore of the town, must 
content himself with judiciously compiling new facts, 
vividly describing passing events, and making up from 
his foreign and domestic files, an entertaining summary 
of news. His comments are necessarily brief ; no op- 
portunity is afforded carefully to digest the knowledge 
he acquires or to compare the occurrence of to-day with 
its parallel in history. Accordingly he glances at the 
new book, utters his party dictum on the last legislative 
act, gives a vague interpretation to the aspects of the 



NEWSPAPERS, 255 

political horizon, and refers to the full, varied, and in- 
teresting details of " news," for both the attraction and 
the value of his journal. A curious effect of this mod- 
ern facility in accumulating news, is that of anticipating 
the effect of time, or superseding the interest of artifi- 
cial excitements. So various, incessant, and impressive 
are the incidents daily brought to our knowledge, so 
visible now is the drama of the world's life, that we 
have scarcely time or inclination for illusions. History 
seems enacting ; changes, once the work of years, are 
effected in as many months, and we are so accustomed 
to the wonderful that sensibility to it is greatly dimin- 
ished. Imagine the scientific discoveries, the political 
revolutions, the memorable facts of the last twenty 
years, all at once revealed to one of our ancestors, at 
the epoch when editors used to board vessels at the 
w^harf to glean three months' English news for their 
weekly readers ; when political items, marine disasters, 
advertisements and marriages were all printed in the 
same column and type, and notice was formally given 
that the postman would start on horseback in a week, 
to convey letters a hundred miles ! Compare, too, the 
terse, emphatic style of the modern press to the old- 
fashioned prolixity, and the practice of publishing both 
sides of a public question on the same sheet, with the 
existent division of newspapers into specific organs ; 
the original extreme deference to authority with the 
present bold discussion of its claims; and the even 
tenor of the past with the eventful present. Each pe- 
riod has its advantages ; and the enduring intellectual 
monuments of the earlier somewhat reproach the rest- 
lessness, diffuse and fragmentary life of to-day. " The 
patriarch of a community," says Martineau, " can never 



256 NEWSPAPERS. 

be restored to the kind of importance which he pos- 
sessed in the elder societies of the world ; from their 
prerogatives he is deposed by the journal ; whose speech- 
less and impersonal lore coldly but .effectually supplies 
the wants once served by the living voice of elders, 
kindling with the inspiration of the past." 

To discover the public feeling of an epoch as well as 
its social economy, historians, not less than novelists, 
wisely resort to a file of old newspapers. In James 
Franklin's journal, commenced at Boston in 1722, and 
afterwards removed to Newport, for instance, we find 
controversies between the clergy and the editors of 
the province, discussions on the utility of inoculation, 
advertisements of runaway slaves, and notices of wliip- 
pings and the pillory — all characteristic facts and land- 
marks of the progress of civilization. The advanced 
culture of the Eastern States is evident from the con- 
temporaneous republication in one of their daily prints 
of the poetry of Shenstone, Collins, and Goldsmith, and 
in another of Robertson's History ; there, too, we find 
Whitefield's preaching theologically analyzed, and the 
manner of the " Spectator " and " Tattler '^ at once imi- 
tated. Federalism was incarnated in the " Columbian 
Centinel " ; and in another organ, of the same commu- 
nity, at an earlier period, the contributions of Otis and 
Quincy prepared the public mind gravely to assert the 
rights for which the colonies were about to struggle. 
The financial essays of Morris and others taught them, 
through a similar medium, the principles of currency, 
exchange, and credit; Dennie induced, in the same 
way, a taste for elegant literature ; and the journals of 
Freneau and Bache embodied the spirit of French 
political fanaticism. History, indeed, records events in 



NEWSPAPERS. 257 

their continuity and with reference to what precedes 
and follows ; but the actual state of public sentiment in 
regard to such exciting affairs as Hamilton's duel, Jef- 
ferson's gunboats, Genet's mission, Perry's victory, the 
Freemason's oath, the death of Washington, California 
gold, and Kossuth's crusade, is most vividly reflected 
from the diverse reports, opinions, and chronicles of the 
newspaper press. 

It is impossible to estimate the fusion of knowledge 
and argument brought about by the press in free coun- 
tries, whereby public sentiment is formed and concen- 
trated. Truth, even the most sacred, was propagated 
in the world ages ago, by oral and written communica- 
tion ; perhaps it was then more cherished and better 
considered ; but without modern facilities of intercourse 
like the press, it is difficult to imagine how a political 
organization like our own, could be regulated and con- 
served ; how universal reputations could be so speedily 
created, the discoveries of science made available to all, 
or charitable and economical enterprise be expanded to 
their present wide issues. The establishment of pro- 
lific and cheap journals in New York in 1830, was an 
event of incalculable historical importance. The uni- 
versal interest in public affairs, justifies in this country 
the greatest editorial enterprise; while the growing 
value of our journals as means of reference, make it 
desirable their form should be convenient; the book- 
shape of Niles' Register is one reason it is so much 
consulted. The variety of talent and opinion enlisted 
in American journalism, the fights and flatteries of its 
conductors, the alacrity and seasonableness which is its 
chief ideal; are traits which absolutely reflect the nor- 
mal life of the people ; the church and school-house 
17 



2^8 NEWSPAPERS. 

which inaugurate an American settlement, are instantly 
followed by the newspaper ; and as the antiquarian now 
searches the " Boston-News Letter " or " Pennsylvanian 
Gazette" for incidents of the Revolutionary war, or 
statistics of colonial trade, he will, a century hence, find 
in the journals of to-day the economical questions, the 
social gauge, the daguerreotyped enterprise, filibuster- 
ism, and popular tastes of this era. 

The stagnation of business and the lapse of metro- 
politan fashionable life, which so emphatically marks 
midsummer in America, make that wonderful chart of 
life, the daily newspaper, more sought and enjoyed than 
at any other time. From the merchant in his counting- 
room, to the stranger in the hotel-parlor, from the pas- 
senger in suburban cars and steamboats, to the teamster 
waiting for a job — there is observable a patience and 
attention in reading newspapers such as one seldom 
perceives at more busy periods of the year. And if 
we were to cite a single characteristic sign of the times, 
as of universal import, it would be American journalism. 
The avidity with which the papers are seized at water- 
ing places — the habit of making their contents the 
staple of talk, and the manner in which they are con- 
ducted in order to meet the popular demands — are 
facts indicative of modern civilization which no one can 
ignore who would rightly appreciate its tendency and 
traits. These are brought out and made conscious, to 
a remarkable degree, in the leisure intervals which mid- 
summer alone affords to our active and busy people. 

The truth is that newspaper reading is the exclusive 
mental pabulum of a vast number in this country ; and 
to this circumstance is to be ascribed the amount of 
general information, and ready, though superficial ideas, 



NEWSPAPERS, 259 

on all kinds of subjects, which so astonish foreigners. 
If you converse with your neighbor in the railway cars, 
or listen to the remarks at the table d'hote, hear what 
the farmers, mechanics, tradesmen, and gentlemen, so 
gregariously locomotive now, have to say — you will find 
that the daily press furnishes nine-tenths of the subject- 
matter and the speculative inspiration. There never 
was a time or a country where this " fourth estate," as 
it has been well called, enacted so broad and vital a 
function. Every year our press has become more per- 
sonal and local on the one hand, and more comprehen- 
sive on the other. Cowper's idea of seeing life through 
the " loop-holes of retreat," can now be realized as never 
before. However sequestered may be the summer home 
of our citizens, they have but to con the daily journals 
and know all that goes on in the great world, with a 
detail, as to events, persons, and places, which not only 
satisfies curiosity, but imagination. Nothing is too 
abstract for the discussion, or too trivial for the gossip 
of the American journal. It concentrates the record 
of daily life at home and abroad ; and has so encroached 
upon the province of the old essayists, the excitements 
of fiction and the materials of history, that more or less 
of the literature of each may be found in every well- 
conducted newspaper. 

And yet so undesirable is the unseasonable or ex- 
cessive dependence upon newspaper reading, considered 
with reference to high culture and refined individuality, 
that, of all indirect benefits of modern travel, perhaps 
none is more valuable, as a mental experience, than an 
Eastern tour which cuts off the usual excitements and 
routine of civilized life, and especially that intense and 
absolute relation with the Present fostered by the news- 



260 NEWSPAPERS. 

paper. Under the palms, on the Nile, and amid the 
desert, to a thoughtful mind and sensitive organization, 
it is blissful and auspicious to feel isolated awhile not 
only from the busy material life of the age, but from its 
chart and programme — the newspaper ; and so be able 
to live consciously for a season in the Past, and feel the 
solemn spell of solitude and antiquity. The modern 
deluge of journalism it has been said with more truth 
than we can at present quite appreciate, " bereaves life 
of spirituality, disturbs and overlays individuality, and 
often becomes a mania and a nuisance, to keep out of 
which is the only way to keep sacred. It is a sad bar- 
barism," continues the same writer, "when men yield 
to every impulse from without, with no imperial dig- 
nity in the soul which closes its apartments against the 
virulence of the world and from unworthy intruders." * 
A Swedish archaeologist proves, by relics found in graves 
in Europe and America, that man in the savage state 
makes in form, and as far as possible in material, iden- 
tical utensils and weapons ; so in civilized nations the 
same abuses and traits characterize the periodical press. 
Crabbe's description of the newspaper in England 
eighty years ago, finds a curious parallel in that of 
Sprague in America, fifty years later. 

The individual needs an organ in this age wherein 
and whereby he may record or find reflected his opin- 
ions ; the great evil is that he who directs this repre- 
sentative medium, may be a " landless resolute," a Bohe- 
mian adventurer, without convictions or interests. It 
is to Burke and the opposition who protected printers 
from the House of Commons in 1770, that the " Fourth 
Estate dates its birth ; " and Burke was right in his 

*W.L. Symonds. 



NEWSPAPERS. 261 

declaration — " posterity will bless this day." "Under the 
ancient regime one in a hundred Parisians only could 
read. After the Revolution, all became interested in 
battles ; to read the news became indispensable ; hence 
it has been well said : — " Napoleon a appris a lire aux 
Parisiennes. Le professeur leur a coute cher." The 
biographer of Volney records that philosopher's testi- 
mony against the newspaper as a means of popular cul- 
ture : — " L'auteur des Ruines, appele k la chaire d'His- 
toire, accepte cette charge penible, mais qui portait 
avec elle lui offrir les moyens d'etre utile: tout en 
enseignant I'histoire, il voulait chercher a diminuer 
I'influence journaliere qu'elle exerce sur les actions et 
les opinions des hommes ; il la regardait a juste titre 
comme I'une des sources les plus fecondes de leurs pre- 
juges et de leurs erreurs." De Tocqueville indicates, in 
a different way, his sense of the casual adaptation of 
the newspaper which he describes as " a speech made 
from a window to the chance passers-by in the street." 
Among other tests which the rebellion in the United 
States has thoroughly applied, is that of the press ; and 
it is no exaggeration to say that thereby London and 
Paris journalism has been completely denuded of the 
prestige of integrity and humanity save as exceptional 
traits. 

The deliberate protest of an eminent public man like 
Cobden, is sufficient proof of this fact in regard to the 
great British organ. He writes : — "A tone of preemi- 
nent unscrupulousness in the discussion of political 
questions, a contempt for the rights and feelings of oth- 
ers, and an unprincipled disregard of the claims of con- 
sistency and sincerity on the part of its writers, have 
long been recognized as the distinguishing character- 



262 NEWSPAPERS 

istics of the Times, and placed it in marked contrast 
with the rest of the periodical press, including the 
penny journals of the metropolis and the provinces. 
Its .writers are, I believe, betrayed into this tone mainly 
by their reliance on the shield of an impenetrable se- 
crecy. No gentleman would dream of saying, under 
the responsibility of his signature, what your writer said 
of Mr. Bright yesterday. I will not stop to remark on 
the deterioration of character which follows when a man 
of education and rare ability thus lowers himself, ay, 
even in his own eyes, to a condition of moral cowardice. 
We all know the man whose fortune is derived from the 
Times. We know its manager ; its only avowed and 
responsible editor — he of the semi-official correspond- 
ence with Sir Charles Napier in the Baltic, through 
whose hands, though he never pen a line himself, every 
slander in its leaders must pass — is as well known to 
us as the chief official at the Home-Office. Now the 
question is forced on us whether we, who are behind the 
scenes, are not bound in the interests of the uninitiated 
public, and as the only certain mode of abating such 
outrages as this, to lift the veil and dis^Dcl the delusion 
by which the Times is enabled to pursue this game of 
secrecy to the public and servility to the government—- 
a game (I jDurposely use the word) which secures for 
its connections the corrupt advantages, while denying 
to the public its own boasted benefits of the anonymous 
system." 

The London Times has won, and popularly confirmed 
for itself during the American war for the Union, the 
name of " Weathercock," only fixed awhile by a trade 
wind, and veering, with shameless alacrity, at every 
mercenary and malicious breath ; while never before in 



NEWSPAPERS. 263 

the history of the world, has the line of demarcation 
between what is true and comprehensive, and what is 
interested and partisan, been made so emphatically 
apparent to the common mind as in the vaunts, vaga- 
ries, and vacillations of journalism. On the other hand 
one of the most remarkable evidences of the benefit of 
popular education as well as an unique contribution to 
the materials of history, may be found in the letters of 
the soldiers of the Union army, written from the seat 
of war to their kindred and printed in the local jour- 
nals ; thousands of them have been collected and ar- 
ranged, and they naively describe every battle as wit- 
nessed and fought by as many individuals. Never 
before were such materials of history available. In 
view of the great result — the elimination of vital truth 
by public discussion — the expression as well as the en- 
lightenment and discipline of public sentiment through 
the press, we have ample reason to agree with Jefferson, 
who declared, " If I had to choose between a govern- 
ment without newspapers, or newspapers without a gov- 
ernment, I should prefer the latter." 

A son of Leigh Hunt, in a voluminous work entitled 
"The Fourth Estate," has written the annals of the 
English press ; — of which Count Gurowski has well 
said that it " addresses itself to classes, but seldom, very 
seldom, to the people itself, as the only national ele- 
ment. The English press mentions the name of the 
people to be sure, but speaks of it only in generalities, 
not in that broad and direct sense, as is the case in 
America. Whole districts, communities, and townships 
in England, as well as on the Continent, exist without 
having any newspaper — any organ of publicity. There- 
in England is under the influence of centralization, as 



264 NEWSPAPERS. 

are the other European States. Almost every township 
and more populous village in the free States in the 
Union has its organs, whose circulation is independent, 
and does not interfere with that of those larger papers 
published in the capitals of States, or in the larger 
cities." 

A philosophical and authentic history of the news- 
paper, would, however, not only yield the most genuine 
insight as to public events and the spirit of the age, it 
would also reveal the most exalted and the lowest traits 
of humanity. The cowardly hireling who stabs reputa- 
tions as the hravo of the Middle Ages did hearts— for a 
bribe ; and the heroic defender of truth and advocate 
of reform, loyal with his pen to honest conviction amid 
the wiles of corruption and the ignominy of abuse — in 
a word, the holy champion and the base lampooner are 
both represented in this field. It is one of the condi- 
tions of its freedom, that equal rights shall be accorded 
all ; and the wisest men have deemed the possible evils 
of such latitude more than compensated by the prob- 
able good. Perhaps our own country aifords the best 
opportunity to judge this question ; and here we cannot 
but perceive that private judgment continually modifies 
the influence of the press. We speak habitually of each 
newspaper as the organ of its editor ; and the opinion 
it advances has precisely as much weight with intelli- 
gent readers as the individual is entitled to and no more. 
The days when the cabalistic " we " inspired awe, have 
passed away ; the venom of a scurrilous print, and the 
ferocity of a partisan one, only provoke a smile ; news- 
papers here, instead of guiding, follow public opinion ; 
and they have created, by free discussion, an indepen- 
dent habit of thought on the part of their readers, 



NEWSPAPERS. 265 

which renders their influence harmless when not useful. 
Yet the abuses of journalism were so patent and perni- 
cious thirty years ago, that Hillhouse thus entered his 
wise protest against the growing evil : " Many of our 
faults, much of our danger, are chargeable to a reckless 
press. No institutions or principles are spared its em- 
piric handling. The most sacred maxims of jurispru- 
dence, the most unblemished public characters, the vital 
points of constitutional policy and safety, are dragged 
into discussion and exposed to scorn by presumptuous 
scribblers, from end to end of the nation." Printers 
originally issued gazettes, and depended upon contribu- 
tions for a discussion of public affairs — news whereof 
they alone furnished : gradually arose the editor ; and 
two conditions soon became apparent as essential to his 
success — prompt utterance of opinion, and constant re- 
announcement and advocacy thereof. Cobbett declared 
the genius of journalism to consist in re-iteration, upon 
which distinction a witty editor improved by substitut- 
ing re-irritation. 

As a political element, journalism has entirely changed 
the position of statesmen, and seems destined to subvert 
the secret machinery of diplomacy. These results grow 
out of the enlightenment and circulation of thought on 
national questions induced by their constant public dis- 
cussion by the press ; their tendency is to break up 
monopolies of information, to scatter the knowledge of 
facts, and openly recognize great human interests. By 
condensing the mists of popular feeling into clear and 
powerful streams, or shooting them into luminous crys- 
tals, the judgment, the sympathies, and the will of man- 
kind are gradually modified. Hence, all who represent 
the people, are acted upon as they never could have 



266 NEWSPAPERS. 

been when authority was less exposed to criticism, and 
the means of a mutual understanding and comparison 
of ideas among men less organized and effective. It 
has been justly observed that no danger can result from 
the most seductive " leader " on a public question, while 
the same sheet contains a full report of all the facts re- 
lating to it. The pamphlet and gazette of Addison's 
day, and earlier, are now combined in the newspaper. 
In great exigencies, however, the immediate promulga- 
tion of facts may be a serious national peril ; an experi- 
enced American editor and careful observer of the phe- 
nomena of the Rebellion, thus emphatically testifies to 
the possible evil of an enterprising press : " I believe 
most strongly now, that this Rebellion would have been 
subdued ere this, if, at the outbreak, the Government 
had suppressed every daily newspaper which contained 
a line or a word upon the war question, except to give 
the results of engagements. Our daily journals have 
kept the Confederates minutely and seasonably informed. 
The greater the vigilance and accuracy of these jour- 
nals, the greater their value to the enemy." But a 
more significant result than this may be found in the 
test which the Rebellion has proved, not only to social 
and national, but to professional life, and especially the 
editorial. How completely has the prestige of news- 
papers as organs of opinion faded away before the facts 
of the hour ! What poor prophets, reasoners, historical 
scholars, patriots, and men have some of the conductors 
of the press proved ! With what distrust is it now re- 
garded ; and how does public confidence refuse any 
nucleus but that of individual character. The press, 
therefore, as a popular organ, is unrivalled. It now 
illustrates every phase, both of reform and conserv- 



NEWSPAPERS. 267 

atism, every religious doctrine, scientific interest, and 
social tendency. Take up at random any popular news- 
paper of the day, and what a variety of subjects and 
scope of vision it covers, superficially indeed, but to the 
philosophic mind, none the less significantly ; — the 
world is therein pictured in miniature, the world of 
to-day. 

Probably the most universal charm of a newspaper 
is the gratification it affords what phrenologists call the 
organ of eventuality. Curiosity is a trait of human na- 
ture which belongs to every order of mind, and actuates 
the infant as well as the sage. To its more common 
manifestations, the newspaper appeals, and, indeed, orig- 
inated in this natural craving for incident. In its most 
sympathetic degree, this feeling is the source of the 
profound interest which tragedy inspires, and its lower 
range is the occasion of that pleasure which gossip 
yields. It is a curious fact, that the same propensity 
should be at once the cause of the noblest and the 
meanest exhibitions of character ; yet the poetic impulse 
and reverent inquiry of the highest scientific intelligence 
— intent upon exploring the wonders of the universe, is 
but the exalted and ultimate development of this love 
of the new and desire to penetrate the unknown. The 
everlasting inquiry for news, which meets us in the 
street, at the hearthstone, and even beside the bier and 
in the church, constantly evinces this universal passion 
How often does that commonplace question harshly 
salute the ear of the reflective ; what a satire it is upon 
the glory of the past ; how it baffles sentiment, chills 
enthusiasm, and checks earnestness ! The avidity with 
which fresh intelligence, although of no personal con- 
cern, is seized, the eagerness with which it is circulated, 



268 NEWSPAPERS. 

and the rapidity with which it is forgotten, are more sig- 
nificant of the transitory conditions of human life, than 
the data of the calendar or the ruins of Balbec. They 
prove that we live altogether in the immediate, that our 
dearest associations may be invaded by the most trivial 
occurrence, that the mental acquisitions of years do not 
invalidate a childish love of amusement ; and that the 
mere impertinences of external life have a stronger hold 
upon our nature than the deepest mysteries of con- 
sciousness. " It seems," wrote Fisher Ames, '' as if 
newspaper wares were made to suit a market as much 
as any other. The starers and wonderers and gapers 
engross a very large share of the attention of all the 
sons of the type. I pray the whole honorable craft to 
banish as many murders, and horrid accidents, and mon- 
strous births, and prodigies from their gazettes, by de- 
grees, as their readers will permit ; and by degrees, 
coax them back to contemplate life and manners, to 
consider events with some common sense, and to study 
Nature where she can be known." On the other hand, 
this curiosity about what does not concern us, is un- 
doubtedly linked with the more generous sympathies, 
and is, in a degree, prompted by them, so that philan- 
thropy, good-fellowship, and the amenities of social life 
and benevolent enterprise are more or less the result 
of the natural interest we feel in the affairs of nations 
and those of our neighbor. If the newspaper, there- 
fore, considered merely as a vehicle of general informa- 
tion in regard to passing events, has a tendency to dif- 
fuse, and render fragmentary our mental life, on the 
other hand, it keeps the attention fixed upon something 
besides self, it directs the gaze beyond a narrow circle, 
and brings home to the heart a sense of universal laws, 



NEWSPAPERS. 269 

natural affinities, and progressive interests. But curios- 
ity is not altogether a disinterested passion ; and it is 
amusing to see how newspapers act upon the idiosyn- 
crasy or the interest of readers. The broker unfolds 
the damp sheet at the stock column ; the merchant 
turns, at once, to the ship-news ; the spinster first reads 
the marriages ; the politician, legislative debates ; and 
the author, literary criticisms ; while lovers of the mar- 
vellous, like Abernethy's patient, enjoy the murders. 
To how many human propensities does the newspaper 
thus casually minister ! Old gentlemen are, indeed, 
excusable for losing their temper on a cold morning, 
when kept waiting for a look into the paper by some 
spelling reader; and to a benign observer, the comfort 
of some poor frequenter of a coffee-house oracularly 
dispensing his gleanings from the journals, is pleasant 
to consider ; — a cheap and harmless gratification, an 
inoffensive and solacing phase of self-importance. We 
can easily imagine the anxious expectancy with which 
the visitors at a gentleman's country-seat in England, 
before the epoch of journals, awaited the news-letter 
from town, — destined to pass from house to house, 
through an isolated neighborhood, and almost worn out 
in the process of thumbing. 

Three traditions exist to account for the origin of 
newspapers. The first attributes their introduction to 
the custom prevalent at Venice, about the middle of the 
fifteenth century, of reading the written intelligence 
received from the seat of war, then waging by the 
republic against Solyman II., in Dalmatia, at a fixed 
time and place, for the benefit of all who chose to hear. 
French annalists, on the other hand, trace the great 
invention to a gossiping medical practitioner of Paris, 



270 NEWSPAPERS. 

who used to cheer his patients with all the news he 
could gather, and to save time, had it written out, at 
intervals, and distributed among them ; while an Eng- 
lish historian, quoted by D'Israeli the elder, says, " they 
commenced at the epoch of the Spanish Armada ; and 
that we are indebted to the wisdom of Elizabeth and 
the prudence of Burleigh for the first newspaper." * 
The same authority conjectures that the word gazette is 
derived from gazzerotta, a magpie, but it is usually as- 
cribed to gazet, a small coin, — the original price of a 
copy in Venice. One of the most startling relics of 
Pompeii is the poster advertising gladiators. The oldest 
newspaper in the world, according to " LTmprimiere," 
is published at Pekin. It is printed on silk, and has 
appeared every week for a thousand years. Whatever 
the actual origin, however, it is natural to suppose that 
a gradual transition from oral to written, and thence to 
printed news, was the process by which the modern 
journal advanced towards its present completeness. It 
is remarkable that the retrograde movement essential 
to despotism in all interests, is obvious in the news- 
paper ; — censorship driving free minds from written 
expression, as in the recent instance of Kossuth when 
advocating Hungarian progress. 

A rigid and complete analytical history of the news- 
paper would perhaps afford the best illustration of the 
social and civic development of the civilized world. 

* " News-letters were written by enterprising individuals in the me- 
tropolis and sent to rich persons who subscribed for them ; and then cir- 
culated from family to family, and doubtless enjoyed a privilege which 
has not descended to their printed contemporary — the newspaper — 
of never becoming stale- Their authors compiled them from materials 
picked up in the gossip of the coffee-houses." — Draper'' s History qf 
the Intellectual Development of Europe, p. 509. 



NEWSPAPERS. 271 

Commencing with a mere official announcement of na- 
tional events, such as the ancient Romans daily promul- 
gated in writing, we find the next precursor of the public 
journal in that systematic correspondence of the schol- 
ars of the Middle Ages, whereby erudite, philosophical, 
or aesthetic ideas were regularly interchanged and dif- 
fused. From this to the written circular distributed 
among the English aristocracy, the transition was a nat- 
ural result of economical and social necessity ; and the 
historian of the subject in Great Britain, finds in the 
popularity of the ballad a still further development of 
the same instinct and want expressing itself among the 
peoi^le. As their vital interest in civic questions en- 
larged, pamphlets began to be written and circulated 
on the current topics of the day; then a periodical 
sheet was issued containing foreign intelligence, among 
the earliest specimens whereof is, " The Weekly Newes 
from Italy and Germanie," which first apjDcared in 1622. 
It is a characteristic fact that the first two special news- 
paper organs that were published in England were de- 
voted to sporting * and medical intelligence. But it was 
reserved for the last century to expand these germinal 
experiments into what we now justly consider a great 
civilizing institution. When Burke t began to apply 

* Jockey''s Intelligencer, 1G83. 

t Burke's influence upon journalism was still more direct. "While 
preparing for Dodsley " An Accoimt of the European Settlements in 
America," he was led by his researches to suggest a periodical which 
should chronicle the important literary, political, and social facts of th« 
year. Such was the origin of the " Annual Eegisters." The first vol- 
imie appeared in 1759. For several years it was edited by Burke, is 
still regularly published, and has been imitated in similar publications 
elsewhere, having finally initiated and established the historical element 
of journalism. 



272 NEWSPAPERS. 

philosophy to politics, and Junius to set the example 
of memorable anonymous writing on public questions, 
and Wilkes to battle for the liberty of the press, new 
and powerful intellectual and moral elements were in- 
fused into journalism ; to these, vast mechanical improve- 
ments gave new diffusion ; discussion gave birth to sys- 
tems, invention to new industrial interests, social culture 
to original phases and forms of popular literary taste 
and talent. In England, Hazlitt's psychological criti- 
cisms, Jerrold's local wit, Thackeray's incisive satire, 
the descriptive talent of scores of travelling reporters, 
and the dramatic genius of such observers as Charles 
Dickens, blended their versatile attractions with the 
vivid chronicle of daily news and the elaborate treatise 
of political essayists ; while in France, from Rousseau, 
Grimm, and Mirabeau, to Thiers and St. Beuve, the 
journal represented the sternest political and the most 
finished literary ability ; from the old " Journal Stran- 
ger," devoted to scandal, to Marat's " Ami du Peuple," 
the vicissitudes and the genius of France are enrolled 
in her journalism. 

The French papers have the largest subscription, 
those of London the most complete establishments, and 
in America they are far more numerous than in other 
countries ; over three thousand are now published, and 
their price is about one seventh that of the English. 
The tone of the American press is usually less dignified 
and intellectual than that of France and England. It 
has also the peculiarity of being maintained, in a great 
degree, by advertisements ; thus the commercial as well 
as the party element, both dangerous to the elevation 
of the press, enter largely into its character here. It 
has been said of penny-a-liners that they are to the 



NEWSPAPERS. 273 

newspaper corps what Cossacks are to a regular army , 
and the activity of journalism in Great Britain, and the 
detail of its enterprise, are 'signally evidenced by such 
a class of writers, as well by the fact that in 1826, 
when Canning sent British troops to Portugal, newspa- 
per reporters went with the army, a custom which in the 
Crimean, East India, and recent American war, has 
given birth to such memorable correspondence. The 
'shipping intelligence of United States journals is more 
minute, the philosophical eloquence of those of Paris 
more striking, and the details of court gossip and crim- 
inal jurisprudence more full in those of London, — 
characteristics which respectively mirror national traits 
and the existent state of society in each latitude. The 
shareholders of the London " Times " have occasionally 
divided a net profit of one hundred and twenty thou- 
sand pounds — the well-earned recompense for the 
complete arrangement and efficient exercise of this 
greatest of modern instruments. It is not surprising 
that the most renowned of writers have availed them- 
selves of a medium so direct and imiversal. Chateau- 
briand wrote in the " Journal des Debats " against Po- 
lignac ; Malte-Brun contributed geographical articles to 
the same print ; Benjamin Constant's views were un- 
folded in the " Minerve Franpaise " ; Lafitte's opinions 
found expression in the " Journal du Commerce." Lam- 
artine's ideal of a journal is one which has " assez de 
raison pour convenir aux hommes serieux, assez de te- 
merite pour plaire aux hommes legeres, assez d' excen- 
tricite pour plaire aux aventereux." With all the re- 
strictions to which despotism in France has subjected 
the press, its history as a whole is as Protean as Paris 
life, and reflects the tendencies of national character. 
18 



274 NEWSPAPERS. 

As early as 1650, there was a " Gazette de Burlesque,'* 
soon after a " Mercury Galant " ; the " Journal des De- 
bats " is devoted to facts and its own dignity, the '• Sie- 
cle " represents mercantile interests, " La Presse " is 
full of ideas, and has been well described as partaking 
of the nature of a torrent which "' Se grossit par la re- 
sistance." * Napoleon depended on the " Moniteur," 
and kept the press low because he feared its influence 
more than an army. The proprietors of the " Constitu- 
tionel " often pay a hundred and fifty francs for a single 
column. "William Livingston wrote effectively in 1752, 
in the " Independent Reflector," of New York, against 
Episcopal encroachments. Freedom of the press, in 
America, was established by the trial of the printer Zen- 
ger. Kossuth was a journalist while at the head of a 
nation. Cavour began his public career in the same ca- 
pacity, and Heine was the admirable correspondent of 
leading German journals for many years. Centraliza- 
tion vastly increases the influence of journalism in Paris, 
and its history there is a perfect index of the successive 
revolutions. From Benjamin Franklin to Walter Sav- 
age Landor, and from Junius to Jack Downing, these 
vehicles of ideas have enshrined memorable individual- 
ities as well as phases of general opinion. Jefferson, 
Hamilton, Rufus King, De Witt Clinton, and Everett, 
— all our statesmen, — have been newspaper writers. 

* The following return of the numbers daily printed by the principal 
Paris jouruals is taken from M. Didot's pamphlet on the fabrication of 
paper. It may be regarded as official: " Presse," 40,000 ; " Sifecle," 
35,000; " Constitutionel," 25,000; " Moniteur," 24,000; «' Patrie," 
18,000; "Pays," 14,000; " Debats," 9,000; "Assemblee Nationale," 
5,000; "Univers," 3,500; "Union," 3,500; "Gazette de France," 
2,500 ; " Gazettes de Tribunaux," 2,500. These journals are all printed 
in five offices, and the quantity of paper they annually consume 
amounts to more than four millions of pounds. 



NEWSPAPERS. 275 

Specimens of recorded, thought from the earliest to 
the present time, would aptly mark the history of civil- 
ization ; the writings on stone, wax, bones, lead, palm- 
leaves, bark, linen, and parchment — inscribed by pa- 
tient manual toil, denoting the era when knowledge was 
a mystery and its possessor a seer ; illuminated chroni- 
cles and missals representing its cloistered years ; — 
black-letter, the transition period when it began to ex- 
pand, although still a luxury, and tlie newspaper illus- 
trating its modern diffusion and universality. The 
scribe's vocation was at once superseded by the inven- 
tion of printing, and the scholar's monopoly broken up ; 
hence the scarcity and value of books prior to the times 
of Faust and Caxton, can scarcely be appreciated by 
this generation. Wonderful indeed is the contrast to 
the American traveller, as he muses beside the Anapus 
at Syracuse, over the papyrus vegetating in its waters, 

— between the scrolls of antiquity engrossed on this 
material, and the twenty thousand closely printed sheets 
thrown off in an hour by one of the mammoth daily 
presses of his native country. This rapidity of produc- 
tion, however, is almost as oblivious in its tendency as 
the limited copies produced by the pen and transmitted 
in manuscript. It may be said of exclusive newspaper 
writers and readers, with a few memorable exceptions, 
that their intellectual triumphs are " writ in water " ; 
and melancholy is that fate which condemns a man of 
real genius to the labors of a newspaper editor ; frag- 
mentary and fugitive, though incessant, are his labors, 

— usually destructive of style, and without permanent 
memorials ; when of a political nature they often enlist 
bitter feelings and promote a knowledge of the world 
calculated to indurate as well as expand the mind. A 



276 NEWSPAPERS. 

veteran French writer for the press, describes the edi- 
tor's life as always " trouhUe et militanter An Ameri- 
can poet,"* whose divine art is a safeguard against the 
worst evils of journalism, in a recent history of his 
paper, thus speaks of the influence of the employment 
upon character : — 

" It is a vocation which gives an insight into men's motives, 
and reveals by what influences masses of men are moved, but 
it shows the dark, rather than the bright side of human nature, 
and one who is not disposed to make due allowances for the 
peculiar circumstances in which he is placed, is apt to be led 
by it into the mistake, that the large majority of mankind are 
knaves. It fills the mind with a variety of knowledge relating 
to the events of the day, but that knowledge is apt to be super- 
ficial ; since the necessity of attending to many subjects pre- 
vents the journalist from thoroughly investigating any. In 
this way it begets desultory habits of thought, disposing the 
mind to be satisfied with mere glances at difiicult questions, 
and to delight in passing lightly from one thing to another. 
The style gains in clearness and fluency, but is apt to become, 
in consequence of much and hasty writing, loose, difi'use, and 
stuffed with local barbarisms and the cant phrases of the day. 
Its worst effect is the strong temptation which it sets before 
men, to betray the cause of truth to public opinion, and to 
fall in with what are supposed to be the views held by a con- 
temporaneous majority, which are sometimes perfectly right 
and sometimes grossly wrong." 

In regard to the influence of newspapers on style, it 
has been noted that since their cheap issue, colloquial 
simplicity has vanished. " A single number of a Lon- 
don morning paper," observes a writer in Blackwood, 
" (which in half a century, has expanded from the size 
of a dinner napkin to that of a breakfast tablecloth, 
from that to a carpet, and will soon be forced by the 
* Biyant. 



NEWSPAPERS. 277 

expansion of public business into something resembling 
the mainsail of a frigate,) already is equal in printed 
matter to a very large octavo volume. Every old woman 
in the nation now reads daily a vast miscellany, in one 
volume royal octavo ; thus the whole artificial dialect of 
books has come into play as the dialect of ordinary life. 
This is one form of the evil impressed upon style by jour- 
nalism ; a dire monotony of bookish idiom has stiffened 
all freedom of expression." * As to its effect on the 
morale, when pursued exclusively as a material interest, 
one of the most acute and observant of modern French 
writers says: — "Le journal, au lieu d' etre un sacerdoce, 
est devenu un moyen pour les partis ; de moyen, il s'est 
fait commerce ; et comme to us les commerces, il est sans 
foi ni loi ; " and in allusion to the French, bitterly adds, 
"nous verrons les journaux, diriges d' abord par des 
hommes d' honneur, tomber plus tard sons le gouverne- 
ment de plus mediocre, qui auront la patience et la lachete 
de gomme elastique qui manquent aux beaux genies, ou 
a des epiciers qui auront de I'argent pour acheter des 
plumes." Macaulay, says a French critic, " a conserve 
dans I'histoire, les habitudes qu' il avait gagnees dans les 
journaux." Journalism has proved an effective disci- 
pline for statesmen ; the late prime minister of Sardinia 
first dealt with pubhc questions in the columns of a 
political journal. 

But whatever facility of expression and tact in the 
popular exposition of political science may be acquired 
by the statesman or annalist, in the practice of journal- 
ism, there is no doubt that the worst perversions of 
" English undefiled " have originated in, and been con- 
firmed by, newspapers. On this subject, an American 
* Blcickwood's Magazine, Vol. xxviii., p. 8. 



278 NEWSPAPERS. 

writer at once philosophical, erudite, and liberal, who 
has treated of the history and influence of the English 
language with remarkable insight and eloquence, em- 
phatically testifies to the verbal corruptions and conse- 
quent moral degradation of the newspaper press. " The 
dialect of j^ersonal vituperation," says Marsh, " the 
rhetoric of malice in all its modifications, the Billings- 
gate of vulgar hate, the art of damning with faint praise, 
the sneer of contemptuous irony, have been sedulously 
cultivated ; and, combined with a certain flippancy of 
expression . and ready command of a tolerably exten- 
sive vocabulary, are enough to make the fortune of any 
sharp, shallow, and unprincipled journalist who is con- 
tent with the fame and the pelf" 

The interest which belongs to newspapers as arenas 
for discussion and records of fact, is greatly marred by 
the abuses of the press. No more humiliating exhibi- 
tion of human passion can be imagined than printed 
scurrility ; and no meaner and more contemptible evi- 
dence of skulking treachery than anonymous libels. 
By what anomaly base spirits enact and endure insult 
in this form, which public opinion and the faintest self- 
respect compel them to resent when orally uttered, we 
have never been able to explain. It is, however, a 
satire on the alleged freedom we enjoy in this country, 
that any malicious poltroon who has the means to pur- 
chase types, may defame the character, and thereby 
injure the pros^Derity, of any one towards whom he enter- 
tains a grudge, with comparative impunity. Indeed, if 
a man comes before the public in any shape, even in 
that of a benefactor, he is liable to gross personal at- 
tacks from the press ; here the shafts of envy, of party 
hatred, of blackguardism and of detraction, find a covert 



NEWSPAPERS. 279 

whence they may be sped with deadly aim and little or 
no chance of punishment. To realize, at once, the 
moral grandem* and the degrading abuse of which the 
press is capable, one should read Milton's discourse on 
the " Liberty of Unlicensed Printing," and then a his- 
tory of cases under the law of libel. The choice of 
weapons is allowed his enemy even by the inveterate 
duelist ; but there is this essential dishonor in the at- 
tacks of the practiced writer — that he adroitly uses 
an instrument which his antagonist often cannot wield. 
Thus the laws of honorable warfare are basely set aside ; 
and cowardice often wins an ostensible triumph. The 
meanest threat we ever heard was that of a popular 
author towards a spirited and generous but uneducated 
farmer with whom he was in altercation, and who pro- 
posed a resort to arms : — "I hold a pen that shall 
point the world's finger of scorn at you ! " The cheap- 
est abuse is that which can be poured out in newspa- 
pers ; and besides the comparatively defenceless position 
of the assailed, if he have no skill in pen-craft, it is the 
more contemptible because premeditated ; the insulting 
word may be uttered in the heat of rage, but the slan- 
derous paragraph goes through the process of writing 
and printing; — it is therefore, the result of a deliberate 
act. The " scar of wrath " left on the heart by the par- 
tisan combats of the press, is seldom honorable, and the 
records of duels, persecutions, and street-fights origina- 
ting in libels, is one of the most degrading to all con- 
cerned, of any in social history. Vituperation and 
invective. Billingsgate and the cant nicknames of news- 
paper controversy, belong to the most unredeemed 
species of blackguardism. No wounds rankle in the 
human bosom like those inflicted by the press ; and no 



280 NEWSPAPERS. 

agent of redress should be used with such thorough 
observance of the golden rule. " The French," says 
Matthew Arnold, " talk of the ' brutalite des journaux 
Anglais.' What strikes them comes from the necessary 
inherent tendencies of newspaper writing not being 
checked in England by any centre of intelligent and 
urbane spirit, but rather stimulated by coming in con- 
tact with a provincial spirit." 

From these various capabilities and liabilities of 
journalism we may infer what are the requisites of an 
editor. It is obvious that his intellectual equipment 
should be more versatile and complete than that de- 
manded by any other profession. He is to interpret the 
events of the day, and must, of course, be versed in the 
history of the past ; he is to speak a universal language; 
and the gifts of expression must be his chief endow- 
ment ; he exercises a mighty influence, and, therefore, 
judgment, self-respect, a recognition of rights and du- 
ties, and a benevolent impulse are essential. The juste 
milieu between moral courage and respect for public 
sentiment, should be his goal. It is a significant fact, 
that, in this country, where there are more readers than 
in any other, and, at the same time, entire freedom of 
the press, journals have not attained to the intellectual 
standard of the best of foreign origin, nor has the pro- 
fession of an editor reached the rank it has in Europe. 
With a few exceptions, the vocation has been adopted, 
as school-keeping used to be, as the most available re- 
source. Cleverness has usually been the substitute for 
acquirement ; loyalty to some dogma for philosophy, 
and glib phrases and cant terms for style. In some 
memorable cases, where the London system of a divis- 
' ion of labor is resorted to, and the French practice of 



NEWSPAPERS. 281 

careful rhetoric and reasoning applied to current topics, 
the result has approximated to what a leading journal 
should be. Such names as Franklin, Russell, Thomas, 
Duane, Buckingham, Walsh, Gales, Noah, King, Hoff- 
man, and the eminent contemporary editors of America, 
bear, it must be remembered, but a very small propor- 
tion to the sum total of newspapers published in this 
country ; and it is the average ability and character of 
editors to which we refer. Yet familiarity alone blinds 
us to the " extraordinary talent " exhibited in the jour- 
nalism of our times. " I '11 be shot," says Christopher 
North, to the shepherd, " if Junius, were he alive now, 
would set the world on the rave as he did some half 
century ago." 

The rarest and most needful moral quality in an 
editor is magnanimity. Of all vocations this is the 
one with which narrow motives and exclusive points of 
view are most incompatible. It is true that the office is 
self-imposed; but, in its very nature, is included a com- 
prehensive tone of mind and feeling ; the editor, there- 
fore, who pronounces judgment upon a book, a work of 
art, a public man or popular subject, according to his 
personal animosities or selfish interests, annuls his own 
claim to the position he occupies. If the pulpit, the 
medical chair, the justice's bench, or the authority of 
elective office is exclusively used by an individual for 
direct personal ends, for the exclusive emolument of 
friends, or the gratification of private revenge, the per- 
version is resented at once and indignantly by public 
opinion ; and the same violation of a general principle 
for a particular end, is equally unjustifiable in the press. 
Yet how many journals serve but as channels for the 
prejudices, the likes and dislikes, the plans and whims 



282 NEWSPAPERS. 

of their editors, so that, at last, we recognize them, not 
as broad and reliable expositors of great questions and 
critical taste, but as mouthpieces for the spite, the flat- 
tery, and the ambition of a single vain mortal ! For 
such evils Milton's arguments for jDatient toleration of 
all kinds of printed ideas, are the best remedy : " Pun- 
ishing wits," he says, " enhances their authority ; errors 
known, read, and collated, are of main service toward 
the speedy attainment of what is truest ; and, though 
all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the 
earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously by 
licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength." 
With all its defects, therefore, the emanations of a free 
press are the best expositors of the immediate in taste, 
opinion, and affairs ; and copies of the " Times," the 
" Court Journal," and " Bell's Life in London," depos- 
ited under the corner-stone of a modern English edifice, 
are as authentic memorials of the country and people 
as they exist to-day, as the styles of Grecian architec- 
ture, or the characteristics of Italian painting, of epochs 
in the history of art, and far more detailed, minute, and 
elaborate. The complex state of society, the multitu- 
dinous aspect of life, the progress of science and its 
influence on social economy, can indeed only be desig- 
nated by such a versatile record. The miserable little 
gazzettas issued in the south of Europe, containing only 
the diluted news of the French journals ; the spirited 
feuilletons of the cleverest authors of the day that ap- 
pear in the latter, the enormous advertising sheets in 
this country, and the able rhetoric and argument of the 
daily press in Great Britain, are so many landmarks 
and gauges of the civic life, the mental recreations, the 
prosj)erity and the political intelligence of these differ- 



NEWSPAPERS. 283 

ent countries. Although Fanny Kemble snubbed the 
press-gang, ironically so called, — perhaps in this age 
there is no office capable of a higher ideal standard and 
a more practical efficiency combined, as that of the 
public writer. Let us suppose such a man endowed 
with the greatest faculty of expression, learned in his- 
tory and the arts, with philosophic insight and poetical 
sensibility, chivalric in tone, uniting the principles of 
conservatism and reform, devoted to humanity, gen- 
erous, heroic, independent and " clear in his great 
office;" and thus furnished and inspired, waging the 
battle of honest opinion, a stanch advocate of truth, 
stripping the mask from fanaticism and dishonesty, and 
shedding pure intellectual light on the common mind ; 
— no more noble function can be imagined. Seldom, 
however, is the ideal of an editor even approached ; and 
hence the wisdom of an eclectic system and a division 
of labor ; concentrating upon the same journal, the 
humor of one, the statistical researches of another, the 
learning of a third, and the rhetoric of a fourth, imtil 
all the needful elements are brought into action for a 
common result. 

In periods of war, emigration, or catastrophes of any 
kind, the newspaper becomes a chart of destiny to the 
heart, and is seized with overwhelming anxiety to learn 
the fate of the absent and the loved ; and in times of 
peace and comfort, it is the readiest pastime. What 
traveller does not remember with zest the intervals of 
leisure he has spent, under the trees of the Palais Royal, 
over a fresh gazette ; or the eagerness with which, in 
an Italian cafe, he has devoured " Gahgnani " with his 
breakfast ? It is difficult to imagine how the social re- 
forms that distinguish the age could have been realized 



284 NEWSPAPERS. 

without the aid of newspapers ; or by what other means 
popular sympathy could be kindled simultaneously on 
both sides of the globe. In view of such offices, we 
must regard the editor as a species of modern improvi- 
satore who gathers from clubs, theatres, legislative halls, 
private society, and the streets, the idea and the ele- 
mental spirit of the hour, the topic of the day, the 
moral influence born of passing events, and then con- 
centrates and elaborates it to give forth its vital prin- 
ciples and absolute significance. 

As a medium of controversy, the advantages of the 
newspaper are signal. In 1685, the discussion of popery 
in England was carried on by means of tracts issued 
from the presses of Oxford, Cambridge, and London ; 
and some of the pamphlets of De Foe, Steele, and 
other popular writers, had a large sale ; but the circula- 
tion of these vehicles of argument was limited compared 
to the daily journals of our day ; and in order to reach 
the people, controversialist and agreeable essayists from 
the times of " Sir Roger L'Estrange " to that of " O. 
P. Q.," have wisely availed themselves of newspapers. 
That they now aid rather than form public ojDinion, 
however, is quite obvious. The implicit faith once be- 
stowed upon editors has departed ; and no class are 
more pertinacious in asserting the right of private judg- 
ment than habitual readers of journals ; they derive 
from them materials of discussion rather than positive 
inferences. Yet there are two qualities that in Great 
Britain and America gain an editor permanent admir- 
ers — good-sense and an individual style. The thun- 
der, as Carlyle calls it, of Edward Sterling in the 
London " Times," and the plain words of Cobbett, are 
instances. In fact, the same qualities insure considera- 



NEWSPAPERS. 285 

tion for a newspaper as for an individual ; tone, manli- 
ness, grace or vigor, full and free knowledge, wit and 
fancy, and the sincerity or geniality of the editor's char- 
acter, are not less recognized in his paragraphs than in 
his behavior. But as a general rule, as before sug 
gested, in the United States, the press is the expositor, 
not the herald, of opinion ; the newspapers simply mark 
the level of popular feeling ; their criticism seldom 
transcends the existent taste, and their tone is rarely 
elevated above that of the majority. Between the rad- 
ical and the conservative, there appears no medium ; 
and newspapers symbolize these two extremes. In our 
large cities, there is always one newspaper which has a 
name for respectability of which its editors are extremely 
jealous ; it never startles, offends, or inspires, but pur- 
sues an even, unexceptionable course, is praised by old 
people who have taken it for years, and desire that it 
shall contain their obituary ; its news, however, is usually 
stale, its opinions timid, and its spirit behind the age. 
To represent the opposite element, there is always a 
vigorous, speculative, and fresh-toned newspaper, which 
continually utters startling things, and suggests glorious 
impossibilities ; it is the exponent of reform, a harbin- 
ger of better times, and appeals to hope and fancy, 
rather than to memory and reflection. Now the expe- 
rienced reader will at once perceive that an editor, 
worthy the name, should be an eclectic, and combine in 
his own mind and work, the expression of both these 
extremes of opinion and sentiment ; but it is found, by 
experiment, that a hobby is the means of temporary 
success, — that a catholic temper is unappreciated, and 
that, in a republic, combativeness and self-esteem are 
the organs to be most profitably addressed. 



286 NEWSPAPERS. 

There is a very large class whose reading is confined 
to newspapers, and they manifest the wisdom of Pope's 
maxim about the danger of a little learning. Adoj^ting 
the cant and slang phrases of the hour, and satisfied 
with the hasty conjectures and partial glimpses of 
truth that diurnal journals usually contain, they are at 
once superficial and dogmatic, full of fragmentary ideas 
and oracular common-place. If such is the natural 
eifect upon an undisciplined mind of exclusive newspa- 
per reading, even the scholar, the thinker, and the man 
of refined taste is exposed to mental dissipation from 
the same cause. A celebrated French philosopher, 
recently deceased, remarkable for severe and efficient 
mental labor, told an American friend that he had not 
read a newspaper for four years. It is incalculable 
what productiveness of mind and freshness of concep- 
tion is lost to the cultivated intellect by the habit of 
beginning the day with newspapers. The brain, re- 
freshed by sleep, is prepared to act genially in the morn- 
ing hours ; and a statistical table, prepared by an able 
physiologist, shows that those authors who give this 
period to labor, most frequently attain longevity. Scott 
is a memorable example of the healthfulness and effi- 
ciency attending the practice. If, therefore, the student, 
the man of science, or the author dissipates his mental 
vigor, and the nervous energy induced by a night's 
rej^ose, in skimming over the countless topics of a news- 
paper, he is too much in relation with things in general 
to concentrate easily his thoughts ; his mind has been 
diverted, and his sympathies too variously excited, to 
readily gather around a special theme. Those intent 
upon self-culture, or intellectual results, should, there- 
fore, make this kind of reading a pastime, and resort to 



NEWSPAPERS. 28T 

it in the intervals of more consecutive thought. There 
is no element of civilization that debauches the mind 
of our aoe more than the indiscriminate and exclusive 
perusal of newspapers. Only by consulting history, by 
disciplining the reasoning powers in the study of phi- 
losoiohy, and cherishing a true sense of the beautiful by 
communion with the poets, — in a word, only by habit- 
ual reference to standard literature, can we justly esti- 
mate the record of the hour. There must be great 
examples in the mind, great principles of judgment 
and taste, or the immediate appeal to these qualities is 
ignorantly answered ; whereas, the thoughtful, intelli- 
gent comments of an educated reader of journals upon 
the questions they discuss, the precedents he brings in 
view, and the facts of the past to which he refers, place 
the immediate in relation with the universal, and enable 
us to seize upon essential truth. To depend for mental 
recreation upon newspapers, is a desperate resource ; 
not to consult them is to linger behind the age. De 
Tocqueville has shown that devotion to the immediate 
is characteristic of republics ; and this tendency is man- 
ifest in the prevalence of newspapers in the United 
States. They, in a great measure, supersede the de- 
mand for a more permanent native literature ; they fos- 
ter a taste for ej^hemeral topics and modes of thought, 
and lamentably absorb, in casual efforts, gifts and graces 
of mind which, under a different order of things, would 
have attained not only a higher, but a lasting develop- 
ment. The comparative importance of newspapers 
among us, as materials of history, is evidenced by the 
fact that the constant reference to their files has induced 
the historical societies to propose an elaborate index to 
facilitate the labors of inquirers, which has been felici- 



288 NEWSPAPERS. 

tously called a diving-bell for the sea of print. A list 
of the various journals now in existence would be found 
to include not only every political party and religious 
sect in the country, but every theory of life, every sci- 
ence, profession, and taste, from phrenology to dietetics, 
and from medicine, war, and odd-fellowship, to litera- 
ture, Catholicism, and sporting. Tribunals and pun- 
sters, not less than fashion and chess-players, have their 
printed organ. What was a subordinate element, has 
become an exclusive feature. "In those days," writes 
Lamb, " every morning-paper, as an essential retainer to 
its establishment, kept an author who was bound to fur- 
nish daily a quantum of witty paragraphs at sixpence a 
joke." Now " Punch " and " Charivari " monopolize 
the fun, and grave and gay are separately embodied. 
The cosmopolitan nature of the people would as obvi- 
ously appear in the number of journals issued in foreign 
languages, each nation and tribe having its newspaper 
organ ; and an analysis of the contents, even of one 
popular journal for a single year, wo-uld be found to 
touch the entire circle of human knowledge and vicissi- 
tude, without penetrating to a vital cause, or expanding 
to a comprehensive principle, yet affording a boundless 
horizon ; — astronomical phenomena, causes celebres, 
earthquakes, the advent of a great cantatrice, shipwrecks 
and revolutions, battles and bankruptcies, freshets and 
fires, emeutes and hail-storms, gold discoveries, anniver- 
saries, . executions, Arctic expeditions. World's Fairs, 
the utterance of patriots, and the acts of usurpers ; — 
all the materials of history, the suggestions of philoso- 
phy, and the visions of poetry, in their chaotic, elemen- 
tal, and actual state. It is evident that more excite- 
ment than truth, more food for curiosity than aid to 



NE WSPAPERS. 289 

reflection, more vague knowledge than actual wisdom, 
is thus promulgated and preserved. The harvest of 
the immediate is comparatively barren ; and life only 
proves the truth of Dr. Johnson's association of intel- 
lectual dignity with the past and future. The individ- 
ual, to be true to himself, must take a firm stand asrainst 
the encroachments of this restless, temporary, and ab- 
sorbing life of the moment represented by the newspa- 
per ; he must cleave to Memory and Hope ; he must 
look before and after, or his mind will be superficial in 
its activity, and fruitless in its growth. 

There is no mechanical invention around which clus- 
ter such interesting associations as that of printing ; the 
indirect agency of the press and of journalism is re- 
markable ; and this is owing to the relation they bear 
to the world at large, and to personal improvement. 
The newspaper office has always been a nucleus for 
wits, politicians, and literati, a nursery of local genius, 
and a school for knowledge of the world, and criticism. 
In Franklin's autobiography, the natural effect of even 
a mechanical connection with the press is memorably 
unfolded ; and scarcely a great name in modern history 
is unallied with some incident or activity connected with 
the daily press. Otis, Adams, Hancock, and Warren, 
used to meet at the office of the " Boston Gazette," and 
write essays on colonial rights in its columns. Talley- 
rand and Louis Philippe frequented the sanctum of an 
editor in the same town, to read the " Moniteur," and 
discuss news. Chateaubriand first heard of the king's 
flight from a stray newspaper picked up in a log hut in 
the backwoods of America ; and it sent him back at 
once to the army of the Princes. Home Tooke's " Di- 
19 



290 NEWSPAPERS. 

versions of Piirley " were written to beguile his inipris- 
onment occasioned by a libel ; and his trial resulted in 
making parliamentary reports legal. Hunt's prison- 
life, for which he was indebted to his CQmments on the 
Prince-Regent in the " Examiner," is the most charm- 
ing episode in his memoirs ; and some of the noblest 
flights of Erskine's eloquence arose from the defence of 
those prosecuted for constructive treason based on the 
free expression of opinion in regard to public questions. 
Jefferson thought Freneau's paper " prevented the Con- 
stitution from galloping into a monarchy " ; and it was 
in the columns of a daily journal that Hamilton de- 
fended the proclamation of neutrality. It has been 
said that the most reliable history of the French revo- 
lution, and wars of the republic, could be gleaned from 
the pages of an American journal of the day, conducted 
by a man of political knowledge and military aptitude, 
who combined from various prejudiced foreign papers 
what he deemed an authentic narrative of each act in 
the drama ; and it is certain that the best account of the 
massacre and the destruction of the tea — from which 
dates our Revolution, — are to be found in the contem- 
porary newspapers. Never was contemporary history 
so copiously and minutely written as in the newspaper 
annals of the war for the Union. In fact, the best his- 
tory thereof has been compiled by an assiduous collator 
from current journalism. The history of censorship in 
Europe in modern times is the history of opinion, of 
freedom, and of society. We felt the despotism of the 
King of Naples in all its baseness, only when a writer 
of genius told us, with a sigh, that he had been driven 
to natural history as the only subject upon which he 



NEWSPAPERS. 



291 



could expatiate in print without impediment. Thus 
see how the fate of nations and the experience of 



we 



individuals are associated with the press ; and how its 
influence touches the whole circle of life, — evoking 
genius, kindling nations, informing fugitives, and alarm- 
ing kings. 





PREACHERS. 



" It is neither the vote nor the laying on of hands that gives men the 
right to preach. One's own heart is authority. If he cannot preach to 
edification, he is not authorized, though all the ministers of Chiistendom 
ordain him." 




HITS writes a popular preacher of the conserv- 
ative sect in theology : recognizing a spiritual 
fact and conviction which tempts us to analyze 
and define, as a subject of natural history, the function 
and fame of the preacher. The terra by its derivation 
is the most generic word to indicate clerical vocation ; 
" to say before," to proclaim, inculcate, preach ; in other 
words, to be the herald and representative of truth, right, 
faith, and immortal hope, — such is the basis and logical 
claim of the preacher's authority, under whatever form, 
creed, or character. They may be divided into the in- 
spired, the ascetic, the jovial, the belligerent, the finical, 
the shrewd, and the ingenuous. The " oily man of God " 
described by Pope, Scott's Covenanter, and Friar Tuck, 
the disinterested Vicar of Fielding, Shakspeare's good 
friars and ambitious cardinals, Mawworm, Mrs. Inch- 
bald's Dorimel, the gentle hero of the Sexton's Daugh- 
ter, Manzoni's Prelate and Capuchin, and Mrs. Radcliffe's 
Monks, are genuine and permanent types, only modified 
by circumstances. All that is subtle in artifice, all that 



PREACHERS. 293 

is relentless in the love of power, all that is exalted in 
spiritual graces, all that is base in cunning, glorious in 
self-sacrifice, beautiful in compassion, and noble in alle- 
giance, has been and is manifest in the priest. His great 
distinction is based upon the fact that " the church, 
rightly ministered, is the vestibule to an immortal life." 
He is at once the author of the worst tyranny and the 
grandest amenities of social life. The traveller on 
Alpine summits blesses the name of St. Bernard, and 
descends to Geneva to shudder at the bigoted ferocity 
of Calvin. The picture of the good pastor in the " De- 
serted Village," and Ranke's " Lives of the Popes," give 
us the two extremes of the character. The spiritual 
heroism of Luther, the religious gloom of Cowper, and 
the cheerful devotion of Watts, are but varied expres- 
sions of one feeling, which, according to the frail condi- 
tions of humanity, has its healthy and its morbid phase, 
its authentic and its spurious exposition, and is no more 
to be confounded in its original essence, with its imper- 
fect development and representatives, than the pure 
light of heaven with the accidental mediums which color 
and distort its rays. 

The prestige of the clerical office is greatly diminished 
because many of its prerogatives are no longer exclu- 
sive. " When ecclesiasticism became so weak as to be 
unable to regulate international affairs, and was sup- 
planted by diplomacy, in the castle the jDhysician was 
more^ than a rival for the confessor, in the town the 
mayor was a greater man than the abbot." * The 
clergy, at a former period, were the chief scholars ; 
learning was not less their distinction than sanctity. 

* Draper's Intellectual Development of Europe* 



294 PREACHERS. 

In every intelligent community, this source of influence 
is now shared with men of letters ; and even the once 
peculiar office of public instruction, is now filled by the 
lecturer, who takes an evening from the avocations of 
business or professional life, to claim intellectual sym- 
pathy or impart individual opinions. But the great 
agent in breaking up the monopoly of the pulpit has 
been the press. "Written has in a great measure super- 
seded oral thought. Half the world are readers, and 
the necessity of hearing no longer exists to those desir- 
ous of knowledp'e. The sermons of the old Enorlish 
divines abound with classical learning and comments on 
the times, such as are now sought in periodical litera- 
ture. In Latimer, Andrews, and Donne, we find such 
hints of the prevailing manners as subsequently were re- 
vealed by "The Spectator." The philosophy of antiquity 
and the morals of courts, the facts of distant climes, all 
that we now seek in popular books and the best jour- 
nals, came to the minds of our ancestors through the 
discourses of preachers. American ministers, prior to 
and at the era of the Revolution, were the expositors 
of political as well as religious sentiments. Indepen- 
dent of the priestly rites, therefore, a clergyman, in past 
times, represented social transitions, and ministered to 
intellectual wants, for which we of this age have ade- 
quate provision otherwise ; so that the most zealous 
advocate of reform, doctrine, or ethical philosophy, is 
no longer obliged to have recourse to the sacerdotal 
office, in order to reach the public mind. This appar- 
ent diminution of the privileges of the order, however, 
does not invalidate but rather simplifies its claims. In 
this as in so many other functions of the social economy, 
progress has the effect of reducing to its original ele- 



PREACHERS. 295 

ments the duties and the influence of the profession. 
Education, once their special responsibility, and popu- 
lar enlightenment on the questions of the hour, being 
assumed by others, the preacher is free to concentrate 
his abilities on theology and the religious sentiment. 
Division of labor gives him a better opportunity to be 
" clear in his great office." It is reduced to its normal 
state. Except in isolated and newly-settled communi- 
ties, there is not that incessant appeal to his benevolence 
and erudition : to heal the sick, reconcile litigants, argue 
civic questions, teach the elements of science, promote 
charities ; in a word, to be the village orator and social 
oracle, are not the indispensable requisites of a clergy- 
man's duty which they were before the Newspaper and 
the Lyceum existed. He is, therefore, at liberty to imi- 
tate the apostles of Christianity and the fathers of the 
Church, and bring all his power to awaken devotion 
and faith, and all his learning to the defence of sacred 
truth. That the time and capacity of the profession is 
diffused, and the sympathy of its members enlisted in 
behalf of other than these aims, is, indeed, true ; but 
this is a voluntary and not an inevitable result, and only 
proves that the spirit of the age overlays instead of 
being penetrated and ruled by the priestly office. 

" Civilization," says Lamartine, " was of the sanctuary. 
Kings were only concerned with acts ; ideas belonged to 
the priest." And, by a singular contradiction, with the 
general progress of society, the same class as a whole, 
have proved the most antagonistic to innovation even 
in the form of genius, whose erratic manifestations are 
jealously regarded as inconsistent with professional de- 
corum. Hence Byron, in one of his splenetic moQds, 
exclaimed to Trelawney : " When did parsons patronize 



296 PREACHERS. 

genius ? If one of their black band dares to think for 
himself, he is drummed out or cast aside like Sterne 
and Swift." On the other hand, venerable physicians 
say that the clergy are the most efficient promoters 
of medical innovations ; and that quackery owes its 
social prestige in no small degree to their counte- 
nance. 

After the Reformation, this office as such lost its spe- 
ciality ; the right to exercise it was no longer peculiar ; 
and in all societies and epochs, when a great activity of 
the religious sentiment, or an earnest discussion of 
questions of faith prevailed, men prayed, sermonized, 
commented on Scripture, and mingled all the duties of 
the clerical vocation with their own pursuits. Thus the 
English statesmen of Cromwell's time were versed in 
divinity, exhorted, and published tracts in behalf of 
their creeds. Theology was a popular study ; and the 
kingdom swarmed with lay-preachers. Sects, too, repu- 
diated official leaders ; and even among the Pilgrim 
Fathers of New England, ministers betrayed a jealousy 
of encroachments on the part of their unconsecrated 
brethren. Many Christians also recognized spiritual gifts 
as the exclusive credentials of a priesthood. Church 
not less than State prerogatives were challenged by re- 
publican zeal ; and the historical authority of the order 
being thus openly invaded, a new and more rational test 
was soon applied, and preachers, like kings, were made 
amenable to the tribunal of public opinion, and obliged 
to rest their claims on other than traditional or educa- 
tional authority. "On conserva," says Rochambeau, 
writing of American society at the period of the Revo- 
lution, " au ministre du culte le premiere place dans les 
repas publics ; il benissoit le repas ; niais ses preroga- 



PREACHERS. 297 

tives lie s'entendoient pas plus loin dans la societe.* 
Get expose," he adds, evidently in view of priestly cor- 
ruption in France, " doit amener naturellement des 
nioeurs simples et piires." f " They," says the historian 
of preachers at the time of the Revolutionary war, 
" dealt in no high-sounding phrases of liberty and equal- 
ity ; they went to the very foundations of society, showed 
what the rights of man were, and how those rights be- 
came modified when men gathered into communities. 
The profound thought and unanswerable arguments, 
found in these sermons, show that the clergy were not 
a whit behind the ablest statesmen of the day in their 
knowledge of the great science of human government. 
In reading them, one gets at the true pulse of the peo- 
ple, and can trace the steady progress of the public 
sentiment. The rebellion in New England rested on the 
pulpit, received its strongest impulse, indeed, its moral 
character, from it ; the teachings of the pulpit of Lex- 
ington caused the first blow to be struck for American 
independence." 

The tendency of all the so-called liberal professions 
is to limit and pervert the development of character, by 
giving to knowledge a technical shape, and to thought 
a prescriptive action. Conformity to a specific method 
is unfavorable to original results, and organization often 
does injustice to its subjects. Only the strong men, the 

* Dr. Sprague's " Annals of the American Pulpit," is full of deline- 
ations and anecdotes of prominent preachers. Their energy, zeal, and 
courage, are viewed in connection Avith their racy individual peculiari- 
ties. What some of the Methodists had and have to endure and sutFer, 
is indicated by a direction from a circuit, in want of a preacher, to the 
Western Conference: "Be sure you send us a good swimmer," — it 
being the duty of the minister in that region frequently to swim wide 
and bridgeless streams to keep his appointments. 

t Memoires de Rodiambtau. 



298 PREACHERS. 

brave and the liiglily endowed, rise above such restric- 
tions. It is a kind of social necessity alone which rec- 
onciles the man of scientific genius to seek the passport 
of a medical diploma, — the logician to exert his mind 
exclusively before a legal tribunal, and the votary of 
religious truth to sign a creed and become responsible 
to a congregation. How constantly each breaks away 
from his respective sphere to expatiate in the broad 
kingdom of letters ! Would Humboldt have written 
the Cosmos had his life been confined to a laboratory, 
or a round of medical practice ? Would Burke have 
theorized in so comprehensive a range, if chained to an 
attorney's desk, or Sir Henry Vane's martyrdom acquired 
a holier sanction from the mere title of priest ? 

At the first glance, so distinct are the phases of the 
office that it is difficult to realize its identity. The 
ideal of a village pastor like Oberlin, self-devoted, in a 
secluded district, to the most pure and benevolent enter- 
prise, — the life of a Jesuit missionary in Canada or 
Peru, who seems to incarnate the fiery zeal of the 
Church he represents, — the complacent bishop of the 
Establishment, listlessly going through a prescribed 
form, and his very person embodying worldly pros- 
perity ; and the inelegant but earnest Methodist sway- 
ing the multitude at a camp-meeting in the wilds of 
America, — consider the vast contrast of the pictures ; 
the dark robe, lonely existence, and subtle eye of the 
Catholic ; the simple, friendly, conscientious toil of the 
poor vicar ; the scholarship and good dinners of the 
English bishop ; the cathedral decked with the trophies 
of art, and fields lit up by watch-fires ; the silence of 
the Quaker assembly, and the loud harangue and fran- 
tic moans of the " revival ; " the solemn refinement of 



PREACHERS. 299 

the Episcopal, the intellectual zeal of the Unitarian, and 
the gorgeous rites of the Roman worship ; and an un- 
informed spectator, to whom each was a novelty, would 
imagine that a totally diverse principle was at work. 
To the philosophic eye, the ceremonies, organization, 
costume, rites, and even creeds of Christian sects, are 
but the varied manifestations of a common instinct, 
more or less mingled with other human qualities, and 
influenced in its development by time and place. 
Traced back to its source, and separated from inciden- 
tal association, we find a natural sentiment of religion 
which is represented in social economy by the preacher. 
Simple as was the original relation between the two, 
however, in the process of time it has become so com- 
plicated that it now requires no ordinary analytical 
power to divest the idea of the priest from history, and 
that of religion from the Church, so as to perceive both 
as facts of human nature instead of parts of the ma- 
chinery of civilized life. To do this, indeed, we look 
inward, and derive from consciousness the great idea 
of a religious sentiment ; and then ask ourselves how 
far it is justly represented in the institutions of the 
Church and the persons of her ministers. Let this 
process be tried by a man of high endowments, genuine 
aspirations, and noble sympathies, and what is the re- 
sult ? " Milton," says Dr. Johnson, in his life of that 
poet, " grew old without any visible worship," a phrase 
which, considering the superstition of the writer, and 
the exalted devotional sentiment of the subject, has, to 
our minds, a most pathetic significance. It tacitly ad- 
mits that Milton worshipped his Maker ; it brings him 
before us in a venerable aspect, at the time when he 
was blind, proscribed, and indigent ; we recall his image 



300 PREACHERS. 

at the organ, and seem to catch the symphonies of " Par- 
adise Lost " and the " Hymn on the Nativity ; " and yet 
we are told by the greatest votary of religious forms 
and profession among English literary men — one who 
was oppressed by the sense of religious truth, and a slave 
to Church requirements, that, in his old age, the rever- 
ential bard had no " visible worship." It is an admis- 
sion of great moment ; it is a fact infinitely suggestive 
"Why did not Milton practically recognize any organized 
church, or publicly enact any prescribed form ? Not 
altogether because he had tasted of persecution, and 
been driven, by the force of individual opinion, away 
from popular rites ; but also, and to a far greater degree, 
because he had so fully experienced within himself, the 
force and scope of the religious sentiment, and found 
in its prevalent representation, not an incitement, but a 
hindrance to its exercise. 

In the patriarchal age, the head of a family was its 
priest ; and, in all ages, the true and complete man feels 
a personal interest and responsibility, a direct and entire 
relation to his Creator, that will not suffer interference 
any more than genuine conjugal or parental ties. The 
so-called progress of society has rendered its functions 
more complex, and broken up this simple and natural 
identity between the offices of devotion and those of 
paternity. It has not only made the priestly office dis- 
tinct and apart from domestic life, but shorn it of glory 
by the cumbrous details of a hierarchy and badges of 
exclusiveness ; and lessened its sanctity by changing 
the grand and holy function of a spiritual medium and 
expositor into a professional business and special plead- 
ing. What are conventional preachers but the em- 
ployees of a sect ? And so regarded, how is it possible 



PREACHERS. 301 

to rejoice " in the plain presence of their dignity " ? 
Called upon by a thoroughly earnest soul in its deep 
perplexity and agonizing bewilderment, what can they 
do but repeat the common-places of their office ? How 
instantly are they reduced to the level of other men, 
when brought into contact with a human reality ! The 
voice of true sympathy, though from ignorant lips, the 
grasp of honest affection, though from unconsecrated 
hands, yield more of the balm of consolation in such 
an hour, because they are real, human, and therefore 
nearer to God, than the technical representative of His 
truth. The essential mistake is, that instead of regard- 
ing the .man as something divine in essence and rela- 
tion, a perverse theology assigns that quality to the 
office. It is what is grafted upon, not what is essential 
to, humanity, that is thus made the nucleus of rever- 
ence and hope, whereas priesthood and manhood are 
identical. The authority of the former is derived from 
the latter ; by virtue of being men we become priests, 
that is, servants of the Most High ; and not through 
any miraculous anointing, laying on of hands, courses 
of divinity, or rites of ordination. " How," says Car- 
lyle, " did Christianity arise and spread abroad among 
men ? Was it by institutions and establishments and 
well-arranged .systems of mechanism ? Not so. On 
the contrary, in all past and existing institutions for 
those ends, its divine spirit has invariably been found 
to languish and decay. It arose in the mystic deeps of 
man's soul ; and spread abroad by the ' preaching of 
the word,' by simple, altogether natural, and individual 
effi^rts ; and flew like hallowed fire from heart to heart, 
till all were purified and illuminated by it." Accord- 
ingly, if merely professional representatives of the 



302 PREACHERS. 

Church, as such, hold a less influential position now 
than formerly, it is not because the instinct of worship 
has died out in the human heart, nor because men feel 
less than before the need of interpreters of the true, 
the holy, and the beautiful ; it is not that the mysteries 
of life are less impressive, or its vicissitudes less con- 
stant, or its origin and end less enveloped in sacred ob- 
scurity ; but it is because more legitimate priests have 
been found out of the Church than in it ; because that 
institution and its ministers fail to meet adequately the 
wants of the religious sentiment ; and it has been dis- 
covered that the Invisible Spirit is more easily found 
by the lonely seashore than in the magnificent cathe- 
dral ; that the mountain-top is an altar nearer to His 
throne than a chancel ; and that the rustle of forest- 
leaves and the moaning of the sea less disturb the idea 
of His presence in the devout heart, than the monoto- 
nous chant of the choir, or the conventional words of 
the preacher. We have but to glance at the pictures 
of clerical life, so thickly scattered through the memoirs 
and novels of the day, to realize the necessity of an ec- 
lectic spirit in estimating the clerical character — whose 
highest manifestations and most patent abuses seem en- 
tirely irrespective of sect. A Scotch clergyman, writ- 
ing in 1763, of the society at Harrowgate, "made up of 
half-pay officers and clergymen," thus describes the lat- 
ter : " They are in general — I mean the lower order — 
divided into bucks xmd prigs ; of which the first, though 
inconceivably ignorant, and sometimes indecent in their 
morals, yet I held them to be most tolerable, because 
they were unassuming, and had no other affectation but 
that of behaving themselves like gentlemen. The other 
division of them, the prigs, are truly not to be endured, 



PREACHERS. 303 

for they are but half-learned, are ignorant of the world, 
narrow-minded, pedantic, and overbearing." * Contrast 
with this estimate of a class Victor Hugo's portrait of 
an individual in his " Provincial Bishop " — " Monseig- 
neur Bienvenu," so called, instinctively, by the people : 
" The formidable spectacle of created things developed 
a tenderness in him ; he was always busy in finding for 
himself and inspiring others with the best way of sym- 
pathizing and solacing. The universe appeared to him 
like disease. He auscultated suffering everywhere. The 
whole world was to this good and rare priest a perma- 
nent subject of sadness seeking to be consoled." 

The absolute need of separating in our minds the 
idea of the clerical man as a natural development of 
humanity — a normal phase of character — from the 
historical idea of the same personage, is at once evinced 
by the immense distance between the lives, influence, 
and traits of the men who have conspicuously borne 
the office of public religious teachers and administrators 
in different sects, ages, and countries ; as for instance, 
Ximenes, Wolsey, Richelieu, Whitfield, Channing, 
George Herbert, and Dr. Arnold ; in position, habits, 
and relations to the world, how great the contrast! 
And yet each represented to society, in a professional 
way, the same principle ; the former with all the pomp 
of hierarchal magnificence, and all the influence of 
executive power, and the latter by the force of patient 
usefulness, earnest simplicity, and individual moral 
energy. Between Puritan and Pope what infinite 
grades ; between Jewish rabbi and Scotch elder how 
diverse is the traditional sanction ; and how little would 
a novice imagine that the bare walls and plain costume 
* Rev. Archibald Carljle's Autobiography. 



304 PREACHERS. 

of a Friends' meeting had the least of a common origin 
with the gorgeous decorations of a Minster ! Thus do 
the passions, the tastes, and the very blood of races and 
individuals modify the expression of the same instinct ; 
worship is as Protean in its forms as labor, diversion, 
hygiene, or any other human need and activity. Phi- 
losophy reconciles us to the apparent incongruity, and 
reveals beneath surplice, drab-coat, and silken robe, 
hearts that pulsate to an identical measure. 

The best writers have recognized the clerical tone of 
manners as significant of the social condition of each 
period. Burnett thought more highly of his " Pastoral 
Care " than of his History ; and Baxter's " Reformed 
Pastor " is an indirect but keen testimony to the deca- 
dence of the clergy. Macaulay cites Fielding's parson. 
Sir Roger's chaplain in the " Spectator," Cowper's re- 
buke of the " cassocked huntsmen," the Stiggins of 
Dickens, and Honeyman of Thackeray, are but a pop- 
ular reflex of that deep sense of the abuse of a profes- 
sion which is the highest evidence of its normal estima- 
tion. And the types of the vocation seem permanent. 
Every era has its Whateley, its Lammenais, and its 
Spurgeon — or men in the church whose gifts, tone, 
and mission essentially correspond with these. When 
George Herbert abandoned court for clerical aspira- 
tions, a friend protested against his choice " as too mean 
an employment " ; and yet so truly did he illustrate the 
spiritual grandeur of his office that the chime which 
called to prayer from the humble belfry of Bemerton, 
was recognized by the country people as the " saint's 
bell." It was his holiness, and not his attachment to the 
ritual year, that inspired his example while living, and 
embalmed his memory ; lowly kindnesses were " music 



PREACHERS. 305 

to him at midnight " ; charity was " his only perfume " ; 
to teach the ignorant in his estimation " the greatest 
ahns " ; and a day well spent, " the bridal of the earth 
and sky " ; his humanity spiritualized by Christian faith 
and practice, so essentially constituted him a priest that 
" about Salisbury," writes his brother, " where he lived 
beneficed for many years, he was little less than sainted." 
He drew an ideal from his own soul, and for his own 
guidance, in the " Country Parson." 

To the reverent mind that dares to exercise freely 
the prerogative of thought, the constant blending of 
human infirmity with the method of worship is painfully 
evident: the instinct itself, the sentiment — highest in 
man — is thus "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of 
thought ; " what is beautiful and true in the ceremonial 
or the emblem, arrays itself to his consciousness so as 
to intercept the holy beams that he would draw from 
the altar. Let him obey the waves of accident, and 
pause at shrines by the wayside ; and according to cir- 
cumstances will be the inspiration they yield. Thus 
turning from the gay Parisian thoroughfare, at noon- 
day, he may pace the chaste aisles of the Madeleine, 
and feel his devotion stirred by the solemn quietude, 
the iQ\w kneeling figures — perhaps by the dark cata- 
falque awaiting the dead in the centre of the spacious 
floor ; and then what to him is the doctrine of transub- 
stantiation ? Religious architecture is speaking to his 
heart. The voices of the choristers at St. George's 
Chapel, at Windsor, may touch his pious sensibility, but 
if his thoughts revert to the ruddy dean, his good din- 
ners, and indulgent life, and the poor, toilsome vicars, 
which make the Establishment a reflection of the world's 
diversity of condition — the pampered and the drudged ; 
20 



306 PREACHERS. 

or, if he notes the prayer that the Queen may be pre- 
served " in health and wealth" how sanctity ceases to 
invest the priest and the ritual, thus typical of human 
vanity and selfishness ! " We know not," wrote Jerrold, 
" and we say it with grief, but with profound conviction 
of the necessity of every man giving fullest utterance 
to his thoughts — we know not, in this world of ours, in 
this social, out-of-door masquerade, a more dreary short- 
coming, a greater disappointment to the business and 
bosoms of men than the Established Church. Its es- 
sence is self-denial ; its foundations are in humility and 
poverty ; its practice is self-aggrandizement and money- 
getting." Nor is the reverse of the picture, the contrast 
between the high and low clergy, less inauspicious. " A 
Christian bishoj)," writes Sydney Smith, "proposes in 
cold blood, to create a thousand livings of one hundred 
and thirty pounds each, — to call into existence a thou- 
sand of the most unhapj^y men on the face of the earth 
— the sons of the poor, without hope, without the assist- 
ance of private fortune, chained to the soil, ashamed to 
live with their inferiors, unfit for the society of the bet- 
ter classes, and dragging about the English curse of 
poverty, without the smallest hope that they can ever 
shake it off. Can any man of common sense say that 
all these outward circumstances of the ministers of re- 
ligion, have no bearing on religion itself? " On the 
other hand, what divine significance to the pious soul, 
" as through a zodiac moves the ritual year," — in the 
altar, the font, the choral service, the venerable liturgy, 
the holy emblems and hallowed forms whereby this 
Church is consecrated to the hearts of her devout chil- 
dren, and the reverence of sympathetic intelligence. 
Buckle, drawing broad inference from extensive and 



PREACHERS. SOT 

acute research, unmodified by sympathetic observation, 
wrote an historical treatise rich in knowledge and phi- 
losophy, to prove that Spain and Scotland owe whatever 
is hopeless and hampered in their intellectual develop- 
ment to the tyranny of priests and preachers. It was 
a special plea, but it serves to illustrate, with compre- 
hensive emphasis, the antagonism between Ecclesiasti- 
cism and Christianity ; for viewed indi\ddually, as a 
social phenomenon, and not the mere exponent of an 
organization, the preacher or teacher of the right, advo- 
cate of the true, representative of faith, becomes a dis- 
tinct and personal character, and is identified with hu- 
manity. It is when the man and the function coalesce, 
and the former transcends and spiritualizes the latter, 
that in history and in life, all that is great and gracious 
in the vocation, is memorably vindicated. Under this 
genuine aspect, Rousseau found his ideal of happiness 
in the life of a village cure, Chateaubriand renewed the 
heartfelt claims of religion in eloquently describing its 
primitive and legitimate benignities. Medieval eccle- 
siasticism commenced its purifying though inadequate 
ordeal through the heroism of Savonarola at Florence 
and Sarpi at Venice. Current literature, indeed, con- 
tinually and clearly states the problem ; and illustrates 
the question with a frequency and a talent which indi- 
cates how largely it occupies the popular mind. To dis- 
criminate between the preacher's conventional office and 
his spiritual endowment, — between Christianity as a 
sentiment and a dogma, between the religious and the 
temporal authority, between the Church as an institu- 
tion and a faith, is an emphatic mission of artist and 
author in our age. "Witness the salient discussions of 
the " Roman question," the pleas and protests of Galli- 



308 PREACHERS. 

can and Ultramontane, the conservative zeal of the 
Puseyite, and liberal encroachments of the progressive 
clergy, and the picturesque or psychological fictions 
which instruct and beguile modern readers.* Both lit- 
erature and life in modern times, while they attest the 
official decadence of the clergy, as a political and theo- 
logical organization, still more significantly vindicate 
their normal influence as a social power. " Not as in 
the old times," says a philosophical historian, in allusion 
to the clergy of America, " does the layman look upon 
them as the cormorants and curses of society ; they are 
his faithful advisers, his honored friends, under whose 
suggestion and supervision are instituted educational 
establishments, colleges, hospitals, whatever can be of 
benefit to men in this life, or secure to them happiness 
in the life to come." f 

There are types of character that prophesy vocation, 
and we occasionally see in families a gentle being, so 
disinterested, thoughtful, and above the world in natural 
disposition, that he seems born to wear a surplice, as 
one we can behold officiating at the altar by virtue of a 
certain innate adaptation ; and so there are men of 
strong affections, early bereft, and thereby alienated 
from personal motives, and thus peculiarly able to give 
an undivided heart to God and humanity ; or, through a 
singular moral experience, initiated more deeply than 
their fellows into the arcana of truth, and hence justi- 
fied in becoming her expositors. In cases like these, a 
more than conventional reason for the faith that is in 

* The " Warden," " Barchester Towers," and " Framley Parsonage," 
by A. Trollope; " Vincenzo," by Ruffini; " Madamoiselle La Quin- 

tinie," par Geo. Sand; "La Maudit," par L'Abbe ; "Adam 

Bede " ; " Chronicles of Carlingford," etc. 

t Dr. J. W. Draper. 



PREACHERS. 309 

them, causes tliem to speak and act with an authority 
which is its own sanction, and hence springs what is 
vital both in the life and the literature of the visible 
Church. Sacerdotal biography, the achievements of 
the true reformer, the literary bequests of the genuine 
pulpit orator, and the results of efficient parochial gen- 
ius, attest the reality of such characters ; thej are of 
Nature's ordaining, and sectarianism itself is lost sight 
of in their universal and grateful recognition — as wit- 
ness St. Augustine, Fenelon, Luther, Wesley, Fox, and 
Frederick Robertson. Landmarks in the history of our 
race, oases in the desert of theological controversy, flow- 
ers in the garland of humanity, they " vindicate the ways 
of God to man," and are the redeeming facts of eccle- 
siastical life. Above the system they illustrate, beyond 
the limits they designate, and providential exceptions to 
a general rule, we instinctively accept them as holding 
a relation to the religious sentiment and the hisfhest in- 
terests of the world that only a profane imagination can 
associate with the pretensions of the thousands who 
claim their fraternity. This idea of asserting the hu- 
man as consecrated and not usurped by the priestly, has 
ever distinguished the veritable ecclesiastical heroes. 
Lammenais, when a mere youth, was arrested for his 
eloquent advocacy of freedom and faith ; " we will show 
them," he said of the civil tribunals, " what kind of a 
man a priest is." 

Dupuytren, the most celebrated French surgeon of 
his day, was destitute of faith, and by his powerful mind 
and brusque hardihood, overcame the individuality of 
almost every one who approached him. One day a poor 
cure from some village near Paris called upon the great 
surgeon. Dupuytren was struck with his manly beauty 



810 PREACHERS. 

and noble presence, but examined, with his usual non- 
chalance, the patient's neck, disfigured by a horrible 
cancer. ^'Avec cela, il faut 7nourirf said the surgeon. 
" So I thought," calmly replied the priest ; " I expected 
the disease was fatal, and only came to you to please 
my parishioners." He then unfolded a bit of paper 
and took from it a five-franc piece, which he handed to 
Dupuytren, saying : " Pardon, sir, the little fee, for we 
are poor." The serene cHgnity and holy self-possession 
of this man, about to die in the prime of his life, im- 
pressed the stoical surgeon in spite of himself, though 
his manner betrayed neither surprise nor interest. Be- 
fore the cure had descended half the staircase, he was 
called back by a servant. " If you choose to try an 
operation," said^ Dupuytren, " go to the Hotel Dieu, I 
will see you to-morrow." " It is my duty to make use 
of all means of recovery," replied the cure, "I will go." 
The next day, the surgeon cut away remorselessly at 
the priest's neck, laying bare tendons and arteries. It 
was before the days of chloroform, and, unsustained by 
any opiate, the poor cure suffered with uncomplaining 
heroism. He did not even wince. Dupuytren respected 
his courage ; and every day lingered longer at his bed- 
side, when making the rounds of the hospital. In a 
few weeks the cure recovered. A year after the opera- 
tion, he made his appearance in the salon of the great 
professor with a neat basket containing jDcars and chick- 
ens. " Monsieur," he said, " it is the anniversary of the 
day when your skill saved my life ; accept this humble 
gift ; the pears and chickens are better than you can 
find in Paris ; they are of my own raising." Each suc- 
ceeding year, on the same day of the month, the honest 
priest brought his grateful offering. At length Dupuy- 



PREACHERS, 311 

tren was taken ill, and the physicians declared his heart 
diseased. He shut himself up with his favorite nephew 
and refused to see his friends. One day he wrote on a 
slip of paper, "Ze medecin a hesoin dii cure^'' and sent 
it to the village priest, who quickly obeyed the sum- 
mons. He remained for hours in the dying surgeon's 
chamber ; and when he came forth, tears were in his 
eyes, and Dupuytren was no more. How easy for the 
imagination to fill up this outline, which is all that was 
vouchsafed to Parisian gossip. 

Whoever has gone from Roman church or palace — 
his soul yet warm with the radiant figures and divine 
expression of saints and martyrs as depicted by the 
inspired hands of the Christian artists of the fifteenth 
century — into the gloomy and damp catacombs, where 
the early disciples met in order to enjoy " freedom to 
worship God," must have felt at once the solemn reality 
and the beautiful triumph of faith, in its unperverted 
glow — on the one hand nerving the believer to cheer- 
ful endurance, and on the other kindling genius to no- 
ble toil ; and, before this fresh conviction, how vain 
appeared to him the mechanical lite and the cold 
response of conventional worship ! The truth is that 
the history of religion is like the history of love ; a 
natural and divine sentiment has been wrested into 
illegitimate service ; ambitious pretenders, like the wan- 
ton and the coquette, abuse to selfish ends what should 
either be honorably let alone or sacredly cherished. 
This process, at once so habitual and so intricate — 
working through formulas, tradition, appeals to fear, the 
power of custom, the imperative needs and the ignorant 
credulity of the multitude — has gradually built up a 
partition between heaven and earth, obscured spiritual 



312 PREACHERS. 

facts, made. vague and mystical the primitive relation of 
the soul to the fatherhood of God, and thus induced 
either ojDen scepticism or artificial conformity. In 
painting, in music, in literature, in the wonders of the 
universe, in the mysteries of life, and in human con- 
sciousness, the sentiment asserts itself forever ; but to 
the genuine man of to-day is allotted the ceaseless duty 
of keeping it apart from the incrustations of form, the 
perversion of office, and the base uses of ambition and 
avarice. 

The lionism of the pulpit is another desecration. 
London and New York must have their fashionable 
preachers as well as favorite prima donnas, and the 
phenomena attending each are the same. Intellectual 
amusement, exclusiveness, the mode, thus become 'iden- 
tical with that which is their essential opposite, and the 
meekness and sublimity of the religious function is 
utterly lost in a frivolous glare and soulless vanity. The 
pew itself is a satire on existent Christianity ; the very 
organ-airs jDlayed in the fashionable churches, by recall- 
ing the ball-room and the theatre, are ironical ; and -to 
these how often the elegantly-worded common-place of 
the preacher is a fit accompaniment — so well likened, 
by a thoughtful writer, to shovelling sand with a pitch- 
fork ! Thank heaven, we have perpetually the Vicar 
of Wakefield and Parson Adams to keep green the 
memories of that genial simplicity and honest warmth 
of which modern refinement has deprived the clerical 
man. They, at least, were not effigies. Heroism as 
embodied in Knox, scholarship in Barrow, zeal in Dod- 
dridge, holy idealism in Taylor, sacred eloquence in 
Hall and Chalmers, earnest aspiration in Clianning and 
Robertson, — these and like instances of a fine manly 



PREACHERS. 313 

endowment, give vitality to the preacher and signifi- 
cance to his ministrations. 

In a recent farce that had a run at Paris, and carica- 
tures English life, the curtain rises on a deserted' street, 
hushed and gloomy, through which two figures at last 
slowly walk on tiptoe : as they approach, and one 
begins to address the other, the latter, raising his fin- 
ger to his lips, whispers " G'est Soonday" and both dis- 
appear : the comedy ends, however, with a prodigious 
dinner of beef and beer. Absurd as such pictures of 
a London Sabbath are, they yet indicate a suggestive 
truth, which is, that the extreme outward observance in 
Protestant countries, of one day in seven, by repudia- 
ting all pastime, is the best proof of a conscious defect 
in the social representation of the religious instinct, 
exactly as the festivity of continental people, on the 
same day, illustrates the opposite extreme of indiffer- 
ence to appearances. It is probable that neither affords 
a just index of the state of feeling ; for domestic enjoy- 
ments in the one case, and attendance at mass, by sin- 
cere devotees, in the other, are facts that modify the 
apparent truth. It is highly probable, also, that in this 
age of free inquiry and general intelligence, what has 
been lost in public observance has been gained in indi- 
vidual sincerity. There is not the same dependence 
on the preacher. Devotional sentiment is fed from 
other sources. It has come to be felt and understood 
as never before, that man is personally responsible, and 
must seek light for himself, and repose on his own faith. 
Accordingly, he is comparatively unallied to institu- 
tions, and will no longer trust for spiritual insight to a 
mortal as frail and ignorant as himself. The redeeming 
fact is to be soudit in the existence of the sentiment 



814 PREACHERS. 

itself. The sensuality of a Borgia makes more impres- 
sive the sanctity of Fenelon ; because of the artificial 
funeral eulogies of Bossuet, we are more sensible to the 
practical efficiency of Father Matthew ; Calvin's intol- 
erance heightens the glory of Luther's vindication of 
sjDiritual freedom ; the fanaticism of the Methodist, the 
subtlety of the Jesuit, the cold rationalism of the Unita- 
rian, the dark bigotry of the Presbyterian, the monot- 
onous tone of the Quaker, the refined conservatism of 
the Episcopalian, and other characteristics of sects, 
philosophically considered, are but the excess of a ten- 
dency which also manifests its benign and desirable 
influence as an element of Christian society. What 
liberal mind can reflect upon the agency of the English 
Church, pregnant of abuses as it is, without feeling that 
she has greatly contributed to preserve a wholesome 
equilibrium amid conflicting agencies, to keep intact the 
dignity and hallowed associations of worship, to calm 
the feverish impulses and prolong a law of order amid 
chaotic tendencies ? What just observer will hesitate 
to award to Dissenters the honor of imparting a vital 
spirit to the listless body of the Church, renewing the 
sentiment of religion which had become dormant throuo;h 
conventionalism and oppressive institutions, and making 
its divine reality once more a conscious motive and 
solace to the world ? How much have the eminent 
preachers of liberal Christianity, in New England, done 
toward enlarging the charity of sects, elevating the 
standard of pulpit eloquence, and giving to the priestly 
office moral dignity and intellectual force ! Who that 
has witnessed the life-devotion of the Sisters of Charity, 
in a season of pestilence, seen the tears on the bronze 
cheeks of hardy mariners at the Bethel, or heard the 



PREACHERS, 315 

bold protest of the educated divine, above the voice of 
public opinion, at a social crisis, pleading for principle 
against expediency, and has not, for the moment at 
least, forgotten dogmas in grateful appreciation of the 
general benefits resulting from the direct inspiration of 
that sentiment, which the preacher, of whatever creed, 
is ordained to illustrate ? Truly has it been said, that 
" it is the spirit of the soul's natural piety to alight on 
whatever is beautiful and touching in every faith, and 
take thence its secret draught of spiritual refreshment." 
Even popular literature enforces the argument. The 
lives of Fox, Wesley, Fenelon, Arnold, Chalmers, and 
Channing, illustrate the same truth, that the man can 
sanction the priest, the soul vindicate the office, and the 
reality of a sentiment reconcile or sublimate discordant 
creeds. 

That good maxim of the brave English lexicographer, 
" Clear your mind of cant ; " and the noble appeal of 
Campbell's chivalric muse, who asks — 



" has Earth a clod 

Where man, the image of his God, 
Unscourged by Superstition's rod, 
Should bend the knee ? 



have an eternal significance. "We are called upon to 
resist formalism by as potential reasons as those which 
impel to sincere devotion. It is evidenced in the best 
writings of the day, that the highest in man's nature 
may be linked with the most ferocious and abject. Bal- 
four of Burley is but the fanciful embodiment of an 
actual union between religious zeal and a thirst for 
blood. Blanco White's memoirs indicate the possible 
variations of speculative belief in an honest and ardent 



316 PREACHERS. 

mind ; and true observation induced John Foster to 
write his able treatise on " The Objections of Men of 
Taste to Evangelical Religion." '- There is no deny- 
ing," says a popular reviewer, " that there is a certain 
stiff, tough, clayish, agricultural, English nature, on 
which the aggressive divine produces a visible and good 
effect." Father Marquette's adventurous martyrdom, 
Pascal's metaphysical acuteness, the rude courage of 
John Knox, the witch-chronicle of IMather, the magnetic 
power of Edward Irving, the wit that scintillated from 
Sydney Smith, the poetry of Heber, the ideal beauty of 
Buckminster's style, and the virtuous charm of Berke- 
ley, i3rove how the expositors of religion blend with 
professional life the essential characteristics of man, and 
how impossible it is to divide the office we are consid- 
ering, from those qualities and conditions which belong 
essentially to the race. In the face of such diversity, 
before such acknowledged facts, how irrational is it to 
exempt the preacher from any law either of life or 
character ; how unphilosophical and untrue to regard 
him in any other light than that of experience ; and 
how unjust to imagine there is any occult virtue in cere- 
monial systems of faith, or the accident of vocation, 
whereby he derives any special authority unsustained 
by personal gifts and rectitude. 

The problem we have suggested, of an antagonism 
between the theological profession, the office of priest, 
artificially held, and the manly instincts, has recently- 
been illustrated by the criticisms on Carlyle's " Life of 
Sterling." In that work, it is lamented that the mental 
freedom and just development of a gifted, ingenuous 
and aspiring soul were restrained and baffled by the 
vocation of priest ; and to this view Churchmen indig- 



PREACHERS. 317 

nantly protest, and accuse the biographer of infidelity. 
It is evident, however, that it was not religion but its 
formula, not truth but an institution, which he thought 
hampered and narrowed the legitimate spirit of his 
friend. There is that which commands profound re- 
spect in Carlyle's recoil from the conventional ; there is 
justice in his indignation at the attempt to link a true, 
loving, brave, and progressive mind to any wheel of 
social machinery. To keep apart from an organized 
mode of action is the instinct of the best natures, — not 
from pride, but self-respect. Of modern writers few 
have a better right to claim for literature an agency 
more effective. The press has, indeed, in a measure, 
superseded the pulpit. No intelligent observer of the 
signs of the times can fail to perceive that as a means 
of influence, the two are at least equal. In the pages 
of journals, in the verses of poets, in the fivorite books 
of the hour, we have homilies that teach charity and 
faith more eloquently than the conventional Sunday's 
discourse ; they come nearer to experience ; they are 
more the offspring of earnest conviction, and therefore 
enlist popular sympathy. When we turn from such 
genuine pleadings and pictures to those offered by the 
imspiritual preacher, — how unreal do the last appear ! 
It was once remarked by an auditor of a genial man, 
who gave a prescriptive emphasis to his sermons, quite 
foreign to his frank nature, that he seemed to feel that 
what he uttered was " important if true " ; and such is 
the impression not a few preachers leave on the lis- 
tener's mind. If we carefully note those within the 
sphere of our acquaintance, we find that many are either 
visibly oppressed or rendered artificial by their profes- 
sion. It seldom harmoniously blends with their nature. 



318 PREACHERS. 

They seem painfully conscious of a false relation to 
society, or manfully, and, it may be recklessly, put aside 
the ciiaracter, as if it were indeed a masquerade. Either 
course is a proof of incongruity ; and in those cases 
where our confidence and affection are spontaneously 
yielded, is it not the qualities of the man that win and 
hold them ? — his spiritual aptitude to, and not the fact 
of his vocation ? 

In no profession do we find so many instances of a 
mistaken choice, and this even when its duties are re- 
spectably fulfilled. The candid preacher, when arrived 
at maturity, will not seldom confess with pain, that the 
logical skill of the advocate, the love of representing 
nature of the artist, the scientific skill of the physician, 
or the practical industry of the man of affairs, consti- 
tuted the natural basis of his usefulness ; and proved 
inadequate endowments in his actual vocation. Per- 
haps the great error is in prematurely deciding on a 
step so responsible. To bind a youth's interests, repu- 
tation, and opinions to the priesthood, as is often done 
by the imdue exercise of authority and influence, at an 
impressible age, by Protestant not less than Catholic 
families, is a positive wrong ; and the moral courage 
which repudiates what was unjustly assumed, is more 
deserving of honor than blame. Inefliciency, in such 
cases, is proverbial : " He talks like a parson," said 
Lord Carteret, of Sherlock, " and consequently is used 
to talk to people that do not mind him." A clergyman 
in conversing with a gifted layman used the phrase 
" horn preacher." " I do not believe there is such a 
thing," replied the former, " for it implies a born hearer, 
which is a being whose existence is incompatible with 
my idea of the goodness of the Creator." Occasion- 



PREACHERS. 319 

ally we see delightful exceptions to sucli an erroneous 
choice ; men of firm yet gentle souls, deep convictions, 
and sustained elevation, whose talents not less than the 
spirit they are of, whose natural demeanor, habitual tem- 
per, and constitutional sympathies, designate them for 
the sacred office. We listen to their ministrations with- 
out misgiving, accept their counsel, rise on the wings of 
their prayer, respond to their appeals, and rejoice in 
their holiness — as a true and a blest incentive and con- 
solation. We ordain them with our hearts, for the idea 
of the preacher is lost in that of the brother. 

In these instances, the normal conditions of the office 
are realized, the boundaries of sect forgotten, and the 
legitimate idea of a minister to the religious sympathies 
practically made apparent. Such a preacher was Fen- 
elon, in whose life, aspect, and writings the love of God 
and man were exhibited with such pure consistency that 
his name is a spell which invokes all that is sacred in 
the associations of humanity. The blandishments of a 
court, the rudeness of soldiers, the ignorance of pea- 
sants, were alike chastened by his presence. Neither 
persecution, high culture, nor the gifts of fortune, for a 
moment, disturbed his holy self-possession. He dis- 
armed prejudice, envy, intrigue, and violence, by the 
tranquil influence of the spirit he w^as of. Ecclesiasti- 
cal power, ceremony, tradition, and literary fame were 
but the incidental accessories of his career. The prin- 
ciples of Christianity and the temper of its genuine dis- 
ciple so predominated in his actions, speech, manners, 
writings, and in his very tones and expression of coun- 
tenance, that every heart, by the instinct of its best 
affections, recognized his spiritual authority. The man 
thoroughly vindicated the office ; therefore the courtier 



320 PREACHERS. 

at Versailles and the rustic of Cambray held him in 
equal revereuce. 

In Madame Guyon, Anne Hutcheson, and Hannah 
More, we see the religious sentiment and the instinct of 
proselytism in connection "w^itli the idiosyncrasies of 
female character, rendered more affecting by its tender- 
ness, or losing in efficient dignity by the weakness of 
the sex. A beautiful example of the natural preacher, 
unmodified by the paraphernalia of the office, is given 
in Wirt's description of the Blind Preacher, while its 
original identity with scholarship and philosophy is sin- 
gularly illustrated in the career of Abelard ; and Mo- 
liere's "Tartnffe" is but the dramatic embodiment of its 
extreme actual perversion at those periods when the 
form, by a gradual process of social corruption, has 
completely superseded the reality, and cant and hypoc- 
risy are allowed to pass for truth and emotion. All 
that is peculiar in the modus operandi of sects testifies 
to the constant adaptation of the office to occasion : 
thus the itinerant episcopacy of the Methodists, the 
attractive temples of the Catholics, the time-hallowed 
liturgy of the Church of England, the immersing fonts 
of the Baptists, the plain language and prescriptive 
uniformity of the Quakers, and the literary culture of 
the Unitarians, appeal to certain tastes, feelings, or 
associations, which, although independent of the relig- 
ious sentiment, greatly tend to the impressiveness of 
its outward manifestation upon different classes of per- 
sons. A spiritual tendency is characteristic of Sweden- 
borgians ; an absence of the sense of beauty is observ- 
able in the Friends; the superstitious element is the 
usual trait of Romanists ; conservatism prevails among 
Episcopalians ; and a progressive spirit and broad sym- 



PREACHERS. 321 

pathies usually distinguish liberal Christians. To a 
bigot this diversity is offensive ; to a philosopher it is the 
result of an inevitable and beneficent law. An Ameri- 
can poet has aptly described the scene which a Protes- 
tant city presents on a Sabbath morning, when its streets 
are filled with the diverging streams of a population, 
each moving toward its respective place of worship, in 
obedience to this law of individual faith. 

The word " skeleton " as applied to the outline of 
sermons is very significant, for this is the only feature 
they have in common when vital; and yet how different 
the manner in which they are clothed with life ! Some- 
times it is logic, sometimes enthusiasm ; now the elo- 
quence of the heart, and now the ingenuity of the 
head that creates the animating principle ; in one in- 
stance the beauty of style, and in another the force of 
conviction or the glow of sympathy; and there are cases 
where only grace of manner, melody of voice, and the 
magnetism of the preacher's temperament and delivery 
impart to his words their effect; for every grade of 
rhetorical power, from the refinements of artificial study 
to the gush of irresistible feeling, has scope in the pul- 
pit ; there is no sacred charm in that rostrum except 
what its occupant brings ; its possible scale includes 
elocutionary tricks and the most disinterested and un- 
conscious utterance ; mediocrity lisps there its common- 
place truisms, and devotional genius breathes its holy 
oracles ; it is the medium of complacent formulas as 
well as of inspired truth. 

The ancient philosophers and the modern essayists 
often apply wisdom to life in the manner of the best 
sermonizers ; and as Christianity has infused its spirit 
2i 



322 PREACHERS. 

into literature, this has become more apparent. Seneca 
and Epictetus as morah'sts, and Plato in psychological 
speculation, anticipated many of the sentiments that now 
have a religious authority. Rousseau, in as far as he 
was true to humanity, Montaigne to the extent he justly 
interprets the world, Bacon in the degree he indicates 
the approaches to universal truth, Saint Pierre when 
awaking the sentiment of beauty as revealed in Nature, 
Shakspeare by the memorable development of the laws 
of character, Dante as the picturesque limner of the 
material faith of the Middle Ages, Pichter in his beauti- 
ful exposition of human sentiment, — all exhibit a j^hase 
or element of the jDreacher, and in the writings of 
Milton and Chateaubriand it breaks forth with a still 
more direct emphasis. Carlyle and Coleridge, Isaac 
Taylor, Wordsworth, Lamb, and many other effective 
modern writers, are among the most influential of lay 
preachers. And this unprofessional teaching, this priest- 
hopd of nature, has multiplied with the progress of 
society, so that every community has its father confess- 
ors, its sisters of charity, its gifted interpreters and 
eloquent advocates ; while literature, even in forms the 
most profane, continually emulates the sacred function, 
yielding great lessons, exciting holy sentiment, and 
demonstrating pure faith. Indeed, it is characteristic 
of the age, that the technical is becoming merged in 
the aesthetic ; as culture extends, the distinctive in pur- 
suit and office loses its prominence. Lamb jocosely 
told Coleridge he never heard him do anything but 
preach ; and there is scarcely a favorite among the 
authors of the day that, in some way, does not hallow 
his genius by consecrating it to an interpretation or sen- 
timent which, in its last analysis, is religious. 



PREACBERS. 823 

Tn these considerations may be found a partial ex- 
planation of that diminution of individual agency in the 
priesthood to which we have referred. The modern 
religious teachers also, as we have seen, have not the 
same extent of ignorance to vanquish as the old divines. 
The line of demarcation between ecclesiastical polity 
and Christian truth is more evident to the multitude ; 
and it is now felt as never before, that " a heart of deep 
sympathies solves all theological questions in the flame 
of its love and justice." Hence the comparative indiffer- 
ence to controversy ; and the recognition of the primal 
fact — so truly stated by the same reflective writer — 
that " spiritual insight, moral elevation, rich sympathies, 
are the tokens whereby the divinely ordained are sig- 
nalized." * 

The practical inference is, that never before was the 
obligation of personal responsibility in spiritual inter- 
ests, on the part of the laity, so apparent, nor that of a 
thorough integrity in the preacher. To be " clear in 
his great oflfice " — to rely on absolute gifts and essen- 
tials of character — to cleave to simplicity and truth, 
and keep within the line of honest conviction, is now 
his only guarantee, not only of self-respect, but of use- 
fulness and honor. Organization, form, tact, theological 
acquirement, the prestige of traditional importance, are 
of little efficacy. The scientific era — the reaction to 
first causes — the universal and intense demand for the 
real — the exposure of delusions — the test of wide 
intelligence and fearless inquiry — the jealousy of men- 
tal freedom — the multiplied sources of devotional sen- 
timent — the earnestness of the age — all invoke him 
to repudiate the machinery, the historical badge, the 
* Calvert's Scenes and Thoughts in Europe. 



324 



PREACHERS. 



conventional resources of his title — nay, to lose, if 
possible, his title itself — and incarnate only the ever- 
lasting principles, laws, and sentiments, by virtue of 
which alone he may hope for inspiration or claim au- 
thority. 






STATUES. 

" And if it be Prometheus stole from Heaven 
The fire which we endure, it was repaid 
By him to whom the energy was given, 
^Tiich this poetic marble hath arrayed, 
With an eternal glory." ^ 

Byron. 

HERE is as absolute an instinct in the human 
mind for the definite, the palpable, and the 
emphatic, as there is for the mysterious, the 
versatile, and the elusive. With some, method is a 
law, and taste severe in affairs, costume, exercise, social 
intercourse, and faith. The simplicity, directness, uni- 
formity, and pure emphasis or grace of Sculpture have 
analogies in literature and character ; the terse despatch 
of a brave soldier, the concentrated dialogue of Alfieri, 
some proverbs, aphorisms, and poetic lines, that have 
become household words, puritanic consistency, silent 
fortitude, are but so many vigorous outlines, and impress 
us by virtue of the same colorless intensity as a master- 
piece of the statuary. How sculpturesque is Dante, 
even in metaphor, as when he writes, — . 

" Ella non ci diceva alcuna cosa; 
Ma lasciavane gir, solo guardando, 
A guisa di leon quando si posa." 

Nature, too, hints the art, when her landscape tints 
are covered with snow, and the forms of tree, rock, and 
mountain are clearly defined by the universal whiteness. 



326 STATUES. 

Death, in its pale, still, fixed image, — always solemn, 
sometimes beautiful, — would have inspired primeval 
humanity to mould and chisel the lineaments of clay. 
Even New Zealanders elaborately carve their war- 
chibs ; and from the "graven ima»ges" prohibited by 
the Decalogue as objects of worsliip, through the mys- 
terious granite effigies of ancient Egypt, the brutal 
anomalies in Chinese porcelain, the gay and gilded fig- 
ures on a ship's prow, — whether emblems of rude inge- 
nuity, tasteless caprice, retrospective sentiment, or em- 
bodiments of the highest physical and mental culture, 
as in the Greek statues, — there is no art whose origin 
is more instructive and progress more historically sig- 
nificant. The vases of Etruria are the best evidence 
of her degree of civilization ; the designs of Flaxman 
on Wedgwood ware redeem the economical art of Eng- 
land ; the Bears at Berne and the Wolf in the Eoman 
Capitol, are the most venerable local insignia ; the carv- 
ings of Gibbons, in old English manor-houses, outrival 
all the luxurious charms of modern upholstery ; Phidias 
is a more familiar element in Grecian history than Per- 
icles ; the moral energy of the old Italian republics is 
more impressively shadowed forth and conserved in the 
bold and vigorous creations of Michael Angelo than in 
the political annals of Macchiavelli ; and it is the mas- 
sive, uncouth sculptures, half buried in sylvan vegeta- 
tion, which mythically transmit the ancient people of 
Central America. 

We confess a faith in, and a love for, the " testimony 
of the rocks," — not only as interpreted by the saga- 
cious Scotchman, as he excavated the " old red sand- 
stone," but as shaped into forms of truth, beauty, and 
power by the hand of man through all generations. We 



STATUES. 327 

love to catcli a glimpse of these silent memorials of our 
race, whether as Nymphs half-shaded at noon-day with 
summer foliage in a garden, or as Heroes gleaming with 
startling distinctness in the moonlit city-square ; as the 
simihtudes of illustrious men gathered in the halls of 
nations and crowned with a benignant fame, or as jDrone 
effigies on sepulchres, forever proclaiming the calm 
without the - respiration of slumber, so as to tempt us 
to exclaim, with the enamored gazer on the Egyptian 
queen, when the asp had done its work, — 
" She looks like sleep, 

As she would catch another Antony 

In her strong toil of grace.'''' 

Although Dr. Johnson undervalued sculpture, partly 
because of an inadequate sense of the beautiful, and 
partly from ignorance of its greatest trophies, he ex- 
pressed unqualified assent to its awe-inspiring influence 
in " the monumental caves of death," as described by 
Congreve. Sir Joshua truly declares that " all arts ad- 
dress themselves to the sensibility and imagination " ; 
and no one thus alive to the appeal of sculpture, will 
marvel that the infuriated mob spared the statues of the 
Tuileries at the bloody climax of the French Revolu- 
tion ; that a " love of the antique " knit in bonds of life- 
long friendship Winckelmann and Cardinal Albani; 
that among the most salient of childhood's memories 
should be Memnon's image and the Colossus of Rhodes ; 
that an imaginative girl of exalted temperament died 
of love for the Apollo Belvidere, and that Carrara 
should win many a pilgrimage because its quarries have 
peopled earth with grace. 

To a sympathetic eye there are few more pleasing 
tableaux than a gifted sculptor engaged in his work. 



328 STATUES. 

How absorbed lie is ! — standing erect by the mass of 
clay, — 'with graduated touch, moulding into delicate 
undulations or expressive lines the inert mass, now 
stepping back to see the effect, now bending forward, 
almost lovingly, to add a master indentation or detach a 
thin layer ; and so, hour after hour, working on, every 
muscle in action, each perception active, oblivious of 
time, happy in the gradual approximation, under patient 
and thoughtful manipulation, of what was a dense heap 
of earth, to a form of vital expression or beauty. 

Much has been said and written of the limits of 
sculpture ; but it is the sphere, rather than the art itself, 
which is thus bounded ; and one of its most glorious 
distinctions, like that of the human form and face, 
which are its highest subject, is the vast possible variety 
within what seems, at first thought, to be so narrow a 
field. That the same number and kind of limbs and 
features should, under the plastic touch of genius, have 
given birth to so many and totally diverse forms, mem- 
orable for ages, and endeared to humanity, is in itself 
an infinite marvel, which vindicates, as a beautiful won- 
der, the statuary's art from the more Protean rivalry of 
pictorial skill. If we call to mind even a few of the 
sculptured creations which are " a joy forever," even to 
retrospection, haunting by their pure individuality the 
temple of memory, permanently enshrined in heartfelt 
admiration as illustrations of what is noble in man and 
woman, significant in history, powerful in expression, or 
irresistible in grace, — we feel what a world of varied 
interest is hinted by the very name of Sculpture. 
Through it the most just and clear idea of Grecian cul- 
ture is revealed. The solemn mystery of Egyptian, 
and the grand scale of Assyrian, civilization are best 



STATUES. 329 

attested by the saiwe trophies. How a Sphinx typifies 
the land of the Pyramids and all its associations, mytho- 
logical, scientific, natural, and sacred, — its reverence 
for the dead, and its dim and portentous traditions ! 
and what a reflex of Nineveh's palmy days are the 
winged lions exhumed by Layard ! What more authen- 
tic tokens of mediaeval piety and patience exist than 
the elaborate and grotesque carvings of Albert Diirer's 
day ? The colossal Brahma in the temple of Ele- 
phanta, near Bombay, is the visible acme of Asiatic 
superstition. And can an illustration of the revival of 
art, in the fifteenth century, so exuberant, aspiring, and 
sublime, be imagined, to surpass the Day and Night, the 
Moses, and other statues of Angelo ? But such gen- 
eral inferences are less impressive than the personal 
experience of every European traveller with the least 
passion for the beautiful or reverence for genius. Is 
there any sphere of observation and enjoyment to such 
a one, more prolific of individual suggestions than this 
so-called limited art ? From the soulful glow of expres- 
sion in the inspired countenance of the Apollo, to the 
womanly contours, so exquisite, in the armless figure of 
the Venus de Milo, — from the aerial posture of John of 
Bologna's Mercury, to the inimitable and firm dignity 
in the attitude of Aristides in the Museum of Naples, 
— from the delicate lines which teach how gfrace can 
chasten nudity in the Goddess of the Tribune at Flor- 
ence, to the embodied melancholy of Hamlet in the 
brooding Lorenzo of the Medici Chapel, — from the 
stone despair, the frozen tears, as it w^re, of all bereaved 
maternity, in the very bend of Niobe's body and yearn- 
ing gesture, to the abandon gleaming from every muscle 
of the Dancinc: Faun, — from the stern brow of the 



330 STATUES. 

Knife-grinder, and the bleeding frame of the Gladiator, 
whereon are written forever the inhumanities of ancient 
civilization, to the triumphant beauty, and firm, light, 
enjoyable aspect of Dannecker's Ariadne, — from the 
unutterable joy of Cupid and Psyche's embrace, to the 
grand authority of Moses, — how many separate phases 
of human emotion " live in stone " ! What greater con- 
trast to eye or imagination, in our knowledge of facts, 
and in our consciousness of sentiment, can be exempli- 
fied, than those so distinctly, memorably, and gracefully 
moulded in the apostolic figures of Thorwaldsen, the 
Hero and Leander of Steinhaiiser, the lovely funereal 
monument, inspired by gratitude, which Ranch reared 
to Louise of Prussia, Chantrey's SleeiDing Children, 
Canova's Lions in St. Peter's, the bas-reliefs of Ghi- 
berti on the Baptistery doors at Florence, and Gibson's 
Horses of the Sun ? 

The last time Heine went out of doors, before suc- 
cumbing to his fearful malady, he says : '' With difficulty 
I dragged myself to the Louvre, and almost sank down 
as I entered that magnificent hall where the ever-blessed 
goddess of beauty, our beloved Lady of Milo, stands on 
her pedestal. At her feet I lay long and wept so bit- 
terly that a stone must have pitied me. The goddess 
looked compassionately on me, but at the same time 
disconsolately, as if she would say : Dost thou not see 
that I have no arms, and thus cannot help thee ? " 

Have you ever strolled from the inn at Lucerne, on a 
pleasant afternoon, along the Zurich road, to the old 
General's garden, where stands the colossal lion de- 
signed by Thorwaldsen, to keep fresh the brave renown 
of the Swiss guard who perished in defence of the 
royal family of France during the massacre of the Rev- 



STATUES. 331 

olution ? Carved from the massive sandstone, the ma- 
jestic animal, with the fatal spoar in his side, yet loyal 
in his vigil over the royal shield, is a grand image of 
fidelity unto death. The stillness, the isolation, the 
vivid creejDers festooning the rocks, the clear mirror of 
the basin, into which trickle pellucid streams, reflecting 
the vast proportions of the enormous lion, the veteran 
Swiss, w^ho acts as cicerone, the adjacent chapel with its 
altar-cloth wrought by one of the fair descendants of 
the Bourbon king and queen for whom these victims 
perished, the hour, the memories, the admixture of Na- 
ture and Art, convey a unique impression, in absolute 
contrast with such white effigies, for instance, as in the 
dusky precincts of Santa Croce droop over the sepul- 
chre of Alfieri, or with the famous bronze boar in the 
Mercato Nuovo of Florence, or the ethereal loveliness 
of that sweet scion of the English nobility, moulded by 
Chantrey in all the soft and lithe grace of childhood, 
holdinp; a contented dove to her bosom. 

Even as the subject of taste, independently of histor- 
ical diversities, sculpture presents every degree of the 
meretricious, the grotesque, and the beautiful, — more 
emphatically, because more palpably, than is observable 
in painting. The inimitable Grecian standard is an im- 
mortal precedent; the mediaeval carvings embody'the 
rude Teutonic truthfulness ; where Canova provoked 
comparison with the antique, as in the Perseus and Ve- 
nus, his more gross ideal is painfully evident. How 
artificial seems Bernini in contrast with Ang^elo ! How 
minutely expressive are the terra-cotta images of Spain ! 
What a climax of absurdity teases the eye in the mon- 
strosities in stone which draw travellers in Sicily to the 
eccentric nobleman's villa, near Palermo ! Who does 



332 ^ STATUES. 

not shrink from the French allegory, and horrible melo- 
drama, of Ronbillac's monument to Miss Nightingale, 
in Westminster Abbey ? How like Horace Walpole to 
dote on Ann Conway's canine groups ! We actually 
feel sleepy, as we examine the little black marble Som- 
nus of the Florence Gallery, and electrified with the 
first sight of the Apollo, and won to sweet emotion in 
the presence of Nymphs, Graces, and the Goddess of 
Beauty, when, shaped by the hand of genius, they seem 
the ethereal types of that 



" common clay ta'en from the common earth, 



Moulded by God and tempered by the tears 
Of angels to the perfect form of woman." 

Calm and fixed as is the natural language of Sculpt- 
ure, it is the artistic illustration of life's normal activity 
and character in the economy not less than in the ideal 
and heroic phase. " Our statues," says one of the 
quaint personages of Eichter's " Titan," " are no idle, 
dawdling citizens, but all drive a trade. Such as are 
caryates hold up houses ; and heathen water-gods labor 
at the public fountains, and pour out water into the 
pitchers of the maidens. Such as are angels bear up 
baptismal vessels." 

Yet the distinctive element in the pleasure afforded 
by sculpture is tranquillity, — a quiet, contemplative 
delight ; somewhat of awe chastens admiration ; a feel- 
ing of peace hallows sympathy ; and we echo the poet's 
sentiment, — 

" I feel a mighty calmness creep 
Over my heart, which can no longer borrow 
Its hues from chance or change, — those children of to-morrow." 

It is this fixedness and placidity, conveying the impres- 
sion of fate, death, repose, or immortality, which render 



STATUES. 333 

sculpture so congenial as commemorative of the de- 
parted. Even quaint wooden effigies, like those in St. 
Mary's Church at Chester, with the obsolete peaked 
beards, ruffs, and broadswords, accord with the venera- 
ble associations of a mediaeval tomb ; while marble fig- 
ures, typifying Grief, Poetry, Fame, or Hope, brooding 
over the lineaments of the illustrious dead, seem, of all 
sepulchral decorations, the most apt and impressive. 
We remember, after exploring the plain of Ravenna on 
an autumn day, and rehearsing the famous battle in 
which the brave young Gaston de Foix fell, how the 
associations of the scene and story were defined and 
deepened as we gazed on the sculptured form of a re- 
cumbent knight in armor, preserved in the academy of 
the old city ; it seemed to bring back and stamp with 
brave renown forever the gallant soldier who so long 
ago perished there in battle. In Cathedral and Parthe- 
non, under the dome of the Invalides, in the sequestered 
parish church, or the rural cemetery, what image so ac- 
cords with the sad reality and the serene hope of hu- 
manity, as the adequate marble personification on sar- 
coi3hagus and beneath shrine, in mausoleum or on turf- 
mound ? 

" His palms enfolded on liis breast, 
There is no other thought express'd 
But long disquiet merged in rest." 

In truth, it is for want of comprehensive perception 
that we take so readily for granted the limited scope of 
this glorious art. There is in the Grecian mythology 
alone a remarkable variety of character and expression, 
as perpetuated by the statuary ; and when to her deities, 
we add the athletes, charioteers, and marble portraits, a 
realm of diverse creations is opened. Indeed, to the 



334 STATUES. 

average modem mind, it is the statues of Grecian di- 
vinities that constitute the poetic charm of her history; 
abstractly, we regard them with the poet : — 

' Their gods? what were their gods? 
There 's Mars, all bloody-haired; and Hercules, 
Whose soul was in his sinews; Pluto, blacker 
Than his own hell; Vulcan, who shook his horns 
At every limp he took ; great Bacchus rode 
Upon a barrel ; and in a cockle-shell 
Neptune kept state ; then Mercury was a thief; 
Juno a shrew ; Pallas a prude, at best ; 
And Venus walked the clouds in search of lovers; 
Only great Jove, the lord and thunderer, 
Sat m the circle of his starry power 
And frowned ' I will ! ' to all." 

Not in their marble beauty do they thus ignobly impress 
us, — but calm, fair, strong, and immortal. " They 
seem," wrote Hazlitt, " to have no sympathy with us, 
and not to want our admiration. In their faultless ex- 
cellence, they ajDpear sufficient to themselves." 

In the sculptor's art, more than on the historian's 
page, lives the most glorious memory of the classic past.^ 
A visit to the Vatican by torchlight endears even these 
poor traditional deities forever. 

On lofty ceilings vivid frescoes glow, 

Auroras beam, 
The steeds of Neptune through the waters go, 

Or Sibyls dream. 

As in the flickering torchlight shadows weaved 

Illusions wild, 
Methought Apollo's bosom slightly heaved 

And Juno smiled. 

Aerial Mercuries in bronze upspring, 

Dianas fly, 
And marble Cupids to the Psyches cling 

Without a sigh. 



STATUES. 335 

The absence of complexity in the language and in- 
tent of sculpture is always obvious in the expositions of 
its votaries. In no class of men have we found such 
distinct and scientific views of Art. One lovely evening 
in spring we stood with Bartolini beside the corpse of a 
beautiful child. Bereavement in a foreign land has a 
desolation of its own, and the afflicted mother desired 
to carry home a statue of her loved and lost. We con- 
ducted the sculptor to the chamber of death, that he 
might superintend the casts from the body. No sooner 
did his eyes fall upon it, than they glowed with admira- 
tion and filled with tears. He waved the assistants 
aside, clasped his hands, and gazed spell-bound upon 
the dead child. Its brow was ideal in contour, the hair 
of wavy gold, the cheeks of angelic outline. " How 
beautiful ! " exclaimed Bartolini ; and drawing us to the 
bedside, with a mingled awe and intelligence, he pointed 
out how the rigidity of death coincided, in this fair 
young creature, with the standard of Art ; — the very 
hands, he declared, had stiffened into lines of beauty ; 
and over the beautiful clay we thus learned from the 
lips of a venerable sculptor how intimate and minute is 
the cognizance this noble art takes of the language of 
the human form. Greenough would unfold by the hour 
the exquisite relation between function and beauty, or- 
ganization and use, tracing therein a profound law and 
an illimitable truth. No more genial spectacle greeted 
us in Rome than Thorwaldsen at his Sunday-noon re- 
ceptions ; — his wdiite hair, kindly smile, urbane man- 
ner<^, and unpretending simplicity, gave an added charm 
to the wise and liberal sentiments he expressed on Art, 
reminding us, in his frank eclecticism, of the spirit in 
which Humboldt cultivated science, and Sismondi his- 



336 STATUES. 

tory. Nor less indicative of this clear apprehension 
was the thorough solution we have heard Powers give, 
over the mask taken from a dead face, of the problem, 
how its living aspect was to modify its sculptured repro- 
duction ; or the original views expressed by Palmer as 
to the treatment of the eyes and hair in marble. 

Appropriate and inspiring as are statues as memorials 
of character, in no department of art is there more 
need of a pure and just sense of the appropriate than 
in the choice of subject, locality, and treatment in stat- 
uary embellishment. Many greatly endeared human 
benefactors cannot thus be wisely or genially celebrated. 
Of late years there has been a mania on the subject ; 
and even popular sentiment recognized the impropriety 
of setting up a statue in the market-place, of pious, re- 
tiring Izaak Walton. 

Shelley used to say that a Roman peasant is as good 
a judge of sculpture as the best academician or anato- 
mist. It is this direct appeal, this elemental simplicity, 
which constitutes the great distinction and charm of the 
art. There is nothing evasive and mysterious ; in deal- 
ing with form and expression through features and at- 
titude, average observation is a reliable test. The same 
English poet was right in declaring that the Greek 
sculptors did not find their inspiration in the dissect- 
ing-room ; yet upon no subject has criticism displayed 
greater insight on the one hand and pedantry on the 
other, than in the discussion of these very chefs-d'ceuvres 
of antiquity. While Michel Angelo, who was at Rome 
when the Laocoon was discovered, hailed it as "the 
wonder of Art," and scholars identified the group with 
a famous one described by Pliny, Canova thought that 
the right arm of the father was not in its right position, 



STATUES. 337 

and the other restorations in the work have all been 
objected to. Goethe recognized a profound sagacity in 
the artist. " If," he wrote, " we try to place the bite in 
some different position, the whole action is changed, 
and we find it impossible to conceive one more fitting ; 
the situation of the bite renders necessary the whole 
action of the limbs." And another critic says, " In the 
group of the Laocoon, the breast is expanded and the 
throat contracted to show that the agonies that convulse 
the frame are borne in silence." In striking contrast 
with such testimonies to the scientific truth to Nature 
in Grecian Art, was the objection I once heard an 
American backwoods mechanic make to this celebrated 
work. He asked why the figures were seated in a row 
on a dry-goods box, and declared that the serpent was 
not of a size to coil round so small an arm as the child's 
without breaking its vertebrae. So disgusted was Titian 
with the critical pedantry elicited by this group, that, in 
ridicule thereof, he painted a caricature, — three mon- 
keys writhing in the folds of a little snake. 

Few statues at Rome excite the imagination apart 
from intrinsic beauty, like that of Pompey, at whose 
base tradition says " great Caesar fell." It was discov- 
ered lying across the boundary line of two estates, and 
claimed by both proprietors. Shrewd Cardinal Spada 
decided the head belonged to one and the body to an- 
other. It was decapitated, and sold in fragments for a 
small sum, and by this device was added to his famous 
collection, by the wily churchman. 

Yet, despite the jargon of connoisseurship, against 
which Byron, while contemplating the Venus de Med- 
ici, utters so eloquent an invective, sculpture is a grand, 
serene, and intelligible art, — more so than architecture 
22 



838 STATUES. 

and painting, — and, as such, justly consecrated to the 
heroic and the beautiful in man and history. It is pre- 
eminently commemorative. How the old cities of Eu- 
rope are peopled to the imagination, as well as the eye, 
by the statues of their traditional rulers or illustrious 
children, keeping, as it were, a warning sign, or a sub- 
lime vigil, silent, yet expressive, in the heart of busy life 
and through the lapse of ages ! We could never pass 
Duke Cosmo's imposing effigy in the old square of 
Florence, without the magnificent patronage and the 
despotic perfidy of the Medicean family being revived 
to memory with intense local association, — nor note the 
ugly mitred and cloaked papal figiu*es, with hands ex- 
tended, in the mockery of benediction, over the beggars 
in the piazzas of Romagna, without Ranke's frightful 
picture of Church abuses reappearing, as if to crown 
these brazen forms with infamy. There was always a 
gleam of poetry — however sad — on the most foggy 
day, in the glimpse afforded from our window, in Tra- 
falgar Square, of that patient horseman, Charles the 
Martyr. How alive old Neptune sometimes looked, by 
moonlight, in Rome, as we passed his plashing fountain. 
And those German poets, — Goethe, Schiller, and Jean 
Paul, — what to modern eyes were Frankfort, Stuttgart, 
and Baireuth, unconsecrated by their endeared forms ? 
The most pleasant association Versailles yielded us of 
the Bourbon dynasty was that inspired by Jeanne d'Arc, 
graceful in her marble sleep, as sculptured by Marie 
d'Orleans ; and the most impressive token of Napoleon's 
downfall we saw in Europe was his colossal image in- 
tended for the square of Leghorn, but thrown perma- 
nently on the sculptor's hands by the waning of his 
proud star. The statue of Heber, to Christian vision, 



STATUES. 339 

hallows Calcutta. The Perseus of Cellini breathes of 
the months of artistic suspense, inspiration, and experi- 
ment, so graphically described in that clever egotist's 
memoirs. One feels like blessing the grief-bowed fig- 
ures at the tomb of Princess Charlotte, so truly do 
their attitudes express our sympathy with the love and 
the sorrow her name excites. Would not Sterne have 
felt a thrill of complacency, had he beheld his tableau 
of the Widow Wadman and Uncle Toby so genially 
embodied by Ball Hughes ? What more spirited sym- 
bol of prosperous conquest can be imagined than the 
o^ilded horses of St. Mark's? How natural was Michel 
Angelo's exclamation, " March ! " as he gazed on Dona- 
tello's San Giorgio, in the Church of San IMichele, — 
one mailed hand on a shield, bare head, complete armor, 
and the foot advanced, — like a sentinel who hears the 
challenge, or a knight listening for the charge ! Tene- 
rani's " Descent from the Cross," in the Torlonia Chapel, 
outlives in remembrance the brilliant assemblies of that 
financial house. The outlines of Flaxman, essentially 
statuesque, seem alone adequate to illustrate to the eye 
the great mediaeval poet, whose verse seems often cut 
from stone in the quarries of infernal destiny. How 
grandly sleep the lions of Canova at Pope Clement's 
tomb ! 

A census of the statues of the world, past and pres- 
ent, would indicate an enormous marble population : in 
every Greek and Roman house, temple, public square, 
cemetery, these effigies abounded. According to Pliny 
the number of memorable statues in Athens exceeded 
three thousand; the number brought to Rome from 
conquered provinces was so great that the record 
seems incredible; add to these the countless statues 



340 STATUES. 

we know to have been destroyed, the innumerable frag- 
mentary images encountered in Italy, and the variety 
of modern works from those which people the cathe- 
dral roof to those which adorn private galleries and 
favorite studios, and the mind is bewildered by the ex- 
tent not less than the beauty of the products of the 
chisel. 

We have sometimes wondered that some aesthetic 
philosopher has not analyzed the vital relation of the 
arts to each other and given a popular exposition of 
their mutual dependence. Drawing from the antique 
has long been an acknowledged initiation for the lim- 
ner, and Campbell, in his terse description of the histri- 
onic art, says that therein " verse ceases to be airy 
thought, and sculpture to be dumb." How much of 
their peculiar effects did Talma, Kemble, and Rachel 
owe to the attitudes, gestures, and drapery of the Gre- 
cian statues ! Kean adopted the " dying fall " of Gen- 
eral Abercrombie's figure in St. Paul's as the model of 
his own. Some of the memorable scenes and votaries 
of the drama are directly associated with the sculptor's 
art, — as, for instance, the last act of " Don Giovanni," 
wherein the expressive music of Mozart breathes a 
pleasing terror in connection with the spectral nod of 
the marble horseman ; and Shakspeare has availed him- 
self of this art, with beautiful wisdom, in that melting 
scene where remorseful love pleads with the motionless 
heroine of the "Winter's Tale,"— 

" Her natural posture ! 
Chide me, dear stone, that I may say, indeed, 
Thou art Hermione ; or rather thou art she, 
In thy not chiding : for she was as tender 
As infancy and grace." 



STATUES. 341 

Garrick imitated to the life, in "Abel Drugger," the 
vacant stare peculiar to NoUekens, the sculptor ; and 
Colley Gibber's father was a devotee of the chisel, and 
adorned Chatsworth with free-stone Sea-Nymphs. 

In view of the great historical value, comparative 
authenticity, and possible significance and beauty of 
busts, this department of sculpture has a peculiar in- 
terest and charm. The most distinct idea we have of 
the Roman emperors, even in regard to their individual 
characters, is derived from their busts at the Vatican 
and elsewhere. The benignity of Trajan, the animal 
development of Nero, and the classic vigor of young 
Augustus, are best apprehended through these memo- 
rable effigies which Time has spared and Art trans- 
mitted. And a similar permanence and distinctness of 
impression associate most of our illustrious moderns 
with their sculptured features ; the ironical grimace of 
Voltaire is perpetuated by Houdon's bust ; the sympa- 
thetic intellectuality of Schiller by Dannecker's ; Han- 
del's countenance is familiar through the elaborate 
chisel of Roubillac ; Nollekens moulded Sterne's deli- 
cate and unimpassioned but keen physiognomy, and 
Chantrey the lofty cranium of Scott. AVho has not 
blessed the rude but conscientious artist who carved the 
head of Shakspeare, preserved at Stratford? How 
quaintly appropriate to the old house in Nuremberg is 
Albert Durer's bust over the door ! Our best knowl- 
edge of Alexander Hamilton's aspect is obtained from 
the expressive marble head of him by that ardent re- 
publican sculptor, Ceracchi. It was appropriate for 
Mrs. Damer, the daughter of a gallant field-marshal, to 
portray in marble, as heroic idols, Fox, Nelson, and 
Napoleon. We were never more convinced of the iji- 



842 STATUES. 

trinsic grace and solemnity of this form of " counterfeit 
presentment" than when exploring the Baciocchi pa- 
lazzo at Bologna. In the centre of a circular room, 
lighted from above, and draped as well as carpeted with 
purple, stood on a simple pedestal the bust of Napo- 
leon's sister, thus enshrined after death by her husband. 
The profound stillness, the relief of this isolated head 
against a mass of dark tints, and its consequent em- 
phatic individuality, made the sequestered chamber 
seem a holy place, where communion with the departed, 
so spiritually represented by the exquisite image, ap- 
peared not only natural, but inevitable. Our country- 
man, Powers, has eminently illustrated the possible 
excellence of this branch of Art. In mathematical 
correctness of detail, unrivalled finish of texture, and 
with these, in many cases, the highest characterization, 
busts from his hand have an absolute artistic value, 
independent of likeness, like a portrait by Vandyck or 
Titian. When the subject is favorable, his achieve- 
ments in this regard are memorable, and fill the eye 
and mind with ideas of beauty and meaning undreamed 
of by those who consider marble portraits as wholly 
imitative and mechanical. Was there ever a human 
face which so completely reflected inward experience 
and individual genius as the bust which haunts us 
throughout Italy, broods over the monument -in Santa 
Croce, gazes pensively from library niche, seems to awe 
the more radiant images of boudoir and gallery, and 
sternly looks melancholy reproach from the Ravenna 

tomb ? 

" The lips, as Cuniie's cavern close, 

The cheeks, with fast and sorrow thin, 
The rigid front, almost morose, 
, But for the patient hope within, 



STATUES. 343 

Declare a life whose course hath been 

Unsullied still, though still severe. 
Which, through the wavering clays of sin, 

Kept itself icy chaste and clear." 

National characters become, as it were, household gods 
through the sculptor's portrait ; the duplicates of Cano- 
va's head of Napoleon seem as ai^propriate in the salons 
and shops of France, as the heads of Washington and 
Franklin in America, or the antique images of Scipio 
Africanus and Ceres in Sicily, and Wellington and 
Byron in London. 

It is to us a source of noble delight, that with these 
permanent trophies of the sculptor's art may now be 
mingled our national fame. Twenty years ago, the 
address in Murray's Guide -Book, — Crawford^ an 
American Sculptor, Piazza Barherini, — would have 
been unique ; now that name is enrolled on the list 
of the world's benefactors in the patrimony of Art. 
Greenough, by his pen, his presence, and his chisel, 
gave an impulse to taste and knowledge in sculpture 
and architecture not destined soon to pass away ; no 
more eloquent and original advocate of the beautiful 
and the true in the higher social economies has blest 
our day ; his Cherubs and Medora overflow with the 
poetry of form ; his essays are a valuable legacy of 
philosophic thought. The Greek Slave^of Powers was 
invariably surrounded by visitors at the London World's 
Fair and the Manchester Exhibition. Story's Cleopatra 
was the nucleus of charmed observation at Sydenham. 
The Pearl Diver of Paul Akers is his own most beauti- 
ful monument. Palmer has sent forth from his isolated 
studio at Albany a series of ideal busts, of a pure type 



344 



STATUES. 



of original and exquisite beauty ; and many others might 
be named who have honorably illustrated an American 
claim to distinction in an art eminently republican in 
its perpetuation of national worth and the identity of 
its highest achievements with social progress. 





BRIDGES. 

" I stood on the bridge at midnight, 
As the clocks were striking the hour, 
And the moon rose over the city, 
Behind the dark church-tower. 
And Hke those waters rushing 

Among the wooden piers, 
A flood of thoughts came o'er me, 
That filled my eyes with tears." 

Longfellow. 

INSTINCTIVELY, Treason, in this vast land, 
aimed its first blow at the Genius of Commu- 
l^Jj nication, — the benign and potent means and 
method of American civilization and nationality. The 
great problem Watt and Fulton, Clinton and Morse, so 
gloriously solved, a barbaric necessity thus reduced back 
to chaos ; and not the least sad and significant of the 
bulletins whereby the most base of civic mutinies found 
current record is that entitled, " Destruction of the 
Bridges " ; and (melancholy contrast !) simultaneously 
we hear of constructive energy in the same direction, 
on the Italian peninsula, — an engineer having submit- 
ted to Victor Emmanuel proposals for throwing a bridge 
across the Straits of Messina, " binding Scylla to Charyb- 
dis, and thus clinching Italian unity with bonds of iron." ^ 

* Recent Italian journals speak of a project to construct a bridge 
over the Straits of Messina, to unite Sicily with the mainland. The 
bridge proposed will be a suspension one, on a new system, the chains 
being of cast-steel, and strong enough to support the weight of several 
railway trains. 



346 BRIDGES. 

Bonds of nationality, in more than a physical sense, 
indeed, are bridges ; even cynical Heine found an en- 
deared outlook to his native Rhine on the bastion of 
a familiar bridge. Tennyson makes one an essential 
feature of his English summer-picture, wherein forever 
glows the sweet image of the " Gardener's Daughter " ; 
and Bunyan found no better similitude for Christian's 
passage from Time to Eternity than the " river where 
there is no bridge." 

The primitive need, the possible genius, the science^ 
and the sentiment of a bridge, endear its aspect and as- 
sociations beyond those of any other economical struc- 
ture. There is, indeed, something genially picturesque 
about a mill, as Constable's pencil and Tennyson's muse 
have aptly demonstrated; there is an artistic miracle 
possible in a sculjDtured gate, as those of Ghiberti so 
elaborately evidence ; science, poetry, and human enter- 
prise consecrate a light-house ; sacred feelings hallow a 
sjDire, and mediaeval towers stand forth in noble relief 
against the sunset sky ; but around none of these famil- 
iar objects cluster the same thoroughly human associa- 
tions which make a bridge attractive to the sight and 
memory. In its most remote suggestion it typifies 
man's primal relation to Nature, his first instinctive 
effort to circumvent or avail himself of her resources ; 
indeed, he might take his hint of a bridge from Nature 
herself, — her fallen monarchs of the forest athwart a 
stream, " the testimony of the rocks," the curving 
shores, cavern roofs, and pendent branches, and the 
prismatic bow in the heavens, which a poet well calls 
" a bridge to tempt the angels down." 

A bridge of the simplest kind is oflen charmingly 
effective as a landscape-accessory ; there is a short plank 



BRIDGES. 347 

one in a glen of the White Mountains, which, seen 
through a vista of woodland, makes out the picture so 
aptly that it is sketched by every artist who haunts the 
region. What lines of grace are added to the night- 
view of a great city by the lights on the bridges ! W^hat 
subtile principles enter into the building of such a 
bridge as the Britannia, where even the metallic con- 
traction of the enormous tubes is provided for by sup- 
porting them on cannon-balls ! How venerable seems 
the most graceful of Tuscan bridges, when we remem- 
ber it was erected in the fifteenth century, — and the 
Rialto, when we think of Shylock and Portia ; and 
how signal an instance is it of the progressive applica- 
tion of a true principle in science, that the contrivance 
whereby the South Americans bridge the gorges of 
their mountains, by a pendulous causeway of twisted 
osiers and bamboo, — one of which, crossed by Hum- 
boldt, was a hundred and twenty feet long, — is identi- 
cal with that which sustains the magnificent structure 
over the Niagara River ! The chasms and streams thus 
spanned by a rope of seven strands, have a fairy-like 
aspect. Artist and engineer alike delight in this feat- 
ure of tropical scenery. In some cases the stone struct- 
ures built by the Spaniards, and half destroyed by 
earthquakes, are repaired with bamboo, and often with 
an effective grace. In a bridge the arch is triumphal, 
both for practical and commemorative ends. Unknown 
to the Greeks and Egyptians, even the ancient Romans, 
it is said by modern architects, did not appreciate its 
true mechanical principle, but ascribed the marvellous 
strength thereof to the cement which kept intact their 
semicircle. In Caesar's " Commentaries," the bridge 
transit and vigilance form no small part of military tac- 



848 BRIDGES. 

tics, — boats and baskets serving the same purpose m 
ancient and modern warfare. The Church of old oriff- 

o 

inated and consecrated bridges ; religion, royalty, and 
art celebrate their advent; the opening of Waterloo 
Bridge is the subject of one of the best pictures of a 
modern English painter ; and Cockney visitors to the 
peerless Bridge of Telford still ask the guide where the 
Queen stood at its inauguration. But it is when we 
turn from the historical and scientific to the familiar 
and personal that we realize the spontaneous interest 
attached to a bridge. It is as a feature of our native 
landscape, the goal of habitual excursions, the rendez- 
vous, the observatory, the favorite haunt or transit, that 
it wins the gaze and the heart. There the musing 
angler sits content ; there the echoes of the horse's 
hoofs rouse to expectancy the dozing traveller ; there 
the glad lover dreams, and the despairing wretch seeks 
a watery grave, and the song of the poet finds a re- 
sponse in the universal heart, — 

" How often, oh, how often, 

In the days that have gone by, 
Have I stood on that bridge at midnight, 
And gazed on the wave and sky ! " 

One of the most primitive tokens of civilization is a 
bridge ; and yet no artificial object is more picturesquely 
associated with its ultimate symbols. The fallen tree 
whereon the pioneer crosses a stream in the wilderness 
is not more significant of human isolation than the 
fragmentary arch in an ancient city of the vanished 
home of thousands. Thus, by its necessity and its sur- 
vival, a bridge suggests the first exigency and the last 
relic of civilized life. The old explorers of our West- 
ern Continent record the savage expedients whereby 



BRIDGES. 349 

watercourses were passed, — coils of grape-vine car- 
ried between the teeth of an aboriginal swimmer and 
attached to the opposite bank, a floating log, or, in shal- 
low streams, a series of stepping-stones ; and the most 
popular historian of England, when delineating to the 
eye of fancy the hour of her capital's venerable decay, 
can find no more impressive illustration than to make a 
broken arch of London Bridge the observatory of the 
speculative reminiscent. 

The bridge is, accordingly, of all economical inven- 
tions, that which is most inevitable to humanity, signal- 
izing the first steps of man amid the solitude of Nature, 
and accompanying his progress through every stage of 
civic life ; its crude form makes the wanderer's heart 
beat in the lonely forest, as a sign of the vicinity or the 
track of his kind ; and its massive remains excite the 
reverent curiosity of the archaeologist, who seeks among 
the ruins of Art for trophies of a by-gone race. Few 
indications of Roman supremacy are more striking than 
the unexpected sight of one of those bridges of solid 
and symmetrical masonry which the traveller in Italy 
encounters, when emerging from a mountain-pass or a 
squalid town upon the ancient highway. The perma- 
nent method herein apparent suggests an energetic and 
pervasive race whose constructive instinct was imperial ; 
such an evidence of their pathway over water is as sug- 
gestive of national power as the evanescent trail of the 
savage is of his casual domain. In the bridge, as in no 
other structure, use combines with beauty by an instinc- 
tive law ; and the stone arch, more or less elaborate in 
detail, is as essential now to the function and the grace 
of a bridge, as when it was first thrown, invincible and 
harmonious, athwart the rivers Caesar's legions crossed. 



350 BRIDGES. 

As I stood on the scattered planks which afford a 
precarious foothold amid the rapids of St. Anthony, 
methought these frail bridges of hewn timber accorded 
with the reminiscence of the missionary pioneer who 
discovered and named the picturesque waters, more than 
an elaborate and ancient causeway. Even those long, 
inelegant structures which lead the pedestrian over our 
own Charles River, or the broad inlets of the adjacent 
bay, have their peculiar charm as the scene of many a 
gorgeous autumnal sunset and many a patient " consti- 
tutional " walk. It is a homely, but significant proverb, 
" Never find fault with the bridge that carries you safe 
over." What beautiful shadows graceful bridges cast, 
when the twilight deepens and the waves are calm ! 
How mysteriously sleep the moonbeams there ! What 
a suggestive vocation is a toll-keeper's ! Patriarchs in 
this calling will tell of methodical and eccentric charac- 
ters known for years. 

Bridges have their legends. There is one in Lorn- 
bardy whence a jilted lover sprang with his faithless 
bride as she passed to church with her new lover ; it is 
yet called the "Bridge of the Betrothed." On the 
mountain range, near Serravazza, in Tuscany, is a nat- 
ural bridge which unites two of the lofty peaks ; narrow 
and aerial, it is believed by the peasantry to have mirac- 
ulously formed itself to give foothold to the Madonna as 
she passed over the mountains, and it bears her name. 
An old traveller, describing New York amusements, 
tells us of a favorite ride from the city to the suburban 
country, and says, — " In the way there is a bridge 
about three miles distant, which you always pass as you 
return, called the ' Kissing Bridge,' where it is part of 
the etiquette to salute the lady who has put herself un- 



BRIDGES. 351 

der your protection." * A curious lawsuit was lately 
instituted by the proprietor of a menagerie who lost an 
elejjhant by a bridge giving way beneath his unaccus- 
tomed weight; the authorities protested against dam- 
ages, as they never undertook to give safe passage to so 
large an animal. 

The office of a bridge is prolific of metaphor, where- 
of an amusing instance is Boswell's comparison of him- 
self, when translating Paoli's talk to Dr. Johnson, to a 
" narrow isthmus connecting two continents." It has 
been aptly said of Dante's great poem, that, in the 
world of letters, it is a mediaeval bridge over that vast 
chasm which divides classical from modern times. All 
conciliating authors bridge select severed intelligences, 
and even national feelino^ : as Irvine's writintrs brought 
more near to each other the alienated sympathies of 
England and America, and Carlyle made a trysting- 
place for British and German thought; as Sydney 
Smith's talk threw a suspension-bridge from Conserva- 
tive to Reformer, and Lord Bacon's (in the hour of bit- 
ter alienation between Crown and Commons) " recon- 
ciling genius spanned the dividing stream of party." 

How quaint, yet effective, Jean Paul's illustration of 
an alienated state of human feeling, " the drawbridge 
of countenances, whereupon once the two souls met, 
stood suddenly raised, high in air." Nor less significant 
is a modern historian's definition of an Englishman as 
" an island surrounded by a misty and tumultuous sea 
of prejudices and hatreds, generally unapproachable, 
and, at all times, utterly repiidiative of a bridge'^ Pon- 
tifex Maximus has long ceased to wear the great spirit- 

* Travels through (he Middle Settlements of North America in 1759- 
60. By Rev. Andrew Burnaby. 



352 BRIDGES. 

ual title whose unchallenged attribute was to bridge the 
chasm between earth and heaven. What humor may 
be evolved from a nose-brido^e Punch in his dealins^s 
with the great Duke, and Sterne in his record of Tris- 
tram Shandy's infancy, have notably chronicled ; while 
the infinite delicacy of tension in the bridge of Paga- 
nihi's violin, indicates the relation thereof to exquisite 
gradations of sound. " The Mahomedans," says Scott, 
" have a fanciful idea that the believer, in his passage to 
Paradise, is under the necessity of passing barefoot 
over a bridge composed of red-hot iron plates. All the 
pieces of paper which the Moslem has preserved during 
his life, lest some holy thing being written upon them 
might be profaned, arrange themselves between his feet 
and the burning metal, and so save him from injury." 
In the " Vision " of Mirza, a bridge is typical of human 
life. That was a ludicrous incident related of poor, ob- 
stinate, crazy George the Third, — that encountering 
some boys near a bridge early one morning, he asked 
them what bridge it was. " The Bridge of Kew," they 
replied ; whereuiDon the Hing proposed and gave three 
vociferous cheers for the Bridge of Kew, as a newly-dis- 
covered wonder. Amusing, too, was the warm dispute 
of the two errant lake poets whether a certain acutely 
angular bridge in the Alps was called great A from its 
resemblance to that letter, or as the first of its kind. 

How isolated and bewildered are villagers, when, after 
a tempest, the news spreads that a freshet has carried 
away the bridge ! Every time we shake hands, we 
make a human bridge of courtesy or love ; and that was 
a graceful fancy of one of our ingenious writers to give 
expression to his thoughts in " Letters from under a 
Bridge." With an eye and an ear for Nature's poetry, 



I 



BRIDGES. 853 

the gleam of lamps from a bridge, the figures that pass 
and repass thereon, the rush and the lull of waters be- 
neath, the perspective of the arch, the weather-stains 
on the parapet, the sunshine and the cloud-shadows 
around, are phases and sounds fraught with meaning 
and mystery. 

It is an acknowledged truth in the philosophy of Art, 
that Beauty is the handmaid of Use ; and as the grace 
of the swan and the horse results from a conformation 
whose rationale is movement, so the pillar that supports 
the roof, an 1 the arch that spans the current, by their 
serviceable fitness, wed grace of form to wise utility. 
The laws of architecture illustrate this principle copi- 
ously ; but in no single and familiar product of human 
skill is it more striking than in bridges ; if lightness, 
symmetry, elegance, proportion, charm the ideal sense, 
not less are the economy and adaptation of the struct- 
ure impressive to the eye of science. Perhaps the 
ideas of use and beauty, of convenience and taste, in no 
instance, coalesce more obviously ; and therefore, of all 
human inventions, the bridge lends the most undisputed 
charm to the landscape. It is one .of those symbols 
of humanity which spring from and are not grafted 
upon Nature ; it proclaims her affinity with man, and 
links her spontaneous benefits with his invention and 
his needs ; it seems to celebrate the stream over which 
it rises, and to wed the wayward waters to the order 
and the mystery of life. There is no hint of superflu- 
ity or impertinence in a bridge ; it blends with the wild- 
est and the most cultivated scene with singular aptitude, 
and is a feature of both rural and metropolitan land- 
scape that strikes the mind as essential. A striking 
confirmation of this idea offers itself in a recent critic's 
23 



854 BRIDGES. 

definition of a classic style of writing : " A bridge," he 
says, " coynpletes river landscape ; it stiffens the scenery 
which was before too soft, too delicate, too vegetable. 
Just such is the effect of pure style in literary art." * 
The most usual form has its counterpart in those rocky 
arches which flood and fire have excavated or penned 
up in many picturesque regions, — the segments of 
caverns, or the ribs of' strata, — so that, without the in- 
stinctive suggestion of the mind itself. Nature furnishes 
complete models of a bridge whereon neither Art nor 
Science can improve. Herein the most advanced and 
the most rude peoples own a common skill ; bridges, of 
some kind, and all adapted to their respective countries, 
being the familiar invention of savage necessity and 
architectural genius. The explorer finds them in Africa 
as well as the artist in Rome ; swung, like huge ham- 
mocks of ox-hide, over the rapid streams of South 
America ; spanning in fragile cane-platforms the gorges 
of the Andes ; crossing vast chasms of the AUeghanies 
with the slender iron viaduct of the American railways ; 
and jutting, a crumbling segment of the ancient world, 
over the yellow Tiber : as familiar on the Chinese tea- 
caddy as on Canaletto's canvas ; as traditional a local 
feature of London as of Florence ; as significant of the 
onward march of civilization in Wales to-day as in Ligu- 
ria durinof the Middle Ages. Where men dwell and 
wander, and water flows, these beautiful and enduring, 
or curious and casual expedients are found, as memora- 
ble triumphs of architecture, crowned with historical 
associations, or as primitive inventions that uncon- 
sciously mark the first faltering steps of humanity in 
the course of empire ; for on this continent, where the 

* Bagehot. 



I 



BRIDGES. 355 

French missionary crossed the narrow log supported by 
his Indian convert in the midst of a wilderness, massive 
stone arches shadow broad streams that flow through 
populous cities ; and the history of civilization may be 
traced from the loose stones whereon the lone settler 
fords the watercourse, to such grand, graceful, and per- 
manent monuments of human prosperity as the elabo- 
rate and ancient stone bridges of European capitals. 

When we look forth upon a grand or lovely scene of 
Nature, — mountain, river, meadow, and forest, — what 
a fine central object, what an harmonious artificial feat- 
ure of the picture, is a bridge, whether rustic and sim- 
ple, a mere rude passage-way over a brook, or a curve 
of gray stone throwing broad shadov/s upon the bright 
surface of a river ! Nor less effective is the same ob- 
ject amid the crowded walls, spires, streets, and chim- 
ney-stacks of a city. There the bridge is the least con- 
ventional structure, the suggestive point, the favorite 
locality; it seems to reunite the working-day world 
with the freedom of Nature ; it is, perhaps, the one 
spot in the dense array of edifices and thoroughfares 
which " gives us pause." There, if anywhere, our gaze 
and our feet linger ; people have a relief against the 
sky, as they pass over it ; artists look patiently thither ; 
lovers, the sad, the humorous, and the meditative, stop 
there to observe and to muse ; they lean over the para- 
pet and watch the flowing tide ; they look thence around 
as from a pleasant vantage-ground. The bridge, in pop- 
ulous old towns, is the rendezvous, the familiar land- 
mark, the traditional nucleus of the place, and perhaps 
the only picturesque framework in all those marts and 
homes, more free, open, and suggestive of a common 
lot than temple, square, or palace ; for there pass and 



356 BRIDGES. 

repass noble and peasant, regal equipage and humble 
caravan ; children plead to stay, and veterans moralize 
there ; the privileged beggar finds a standing-place for 
charity to bless ; a shrine hallows or a sentry guards, 
history consecrates or Art glorifies, and trade, pleasure, 
or battle, perchance, lend to it the spell of fame. The 
dearest associations of a life are described in one of 
Jean Ingelow's most elaborate poems, as revolving 
around and identified with " Four Bridpes " : 

o 

" Our brattling river tumbles through the one ; 
The second spans a shallow, weedy brook; 
Beneath the others, and beneath the sun, 
Lie two. long still}^ pools, and on their breasts 
Picture their wooden piles, encased in swallows' nests. 
And round about them grows a fringe of weeds, 
And then a floating crown of lily flowers, 
And yet within small silver-budded weeds ; 
But each clear centre evermore embowers 
A deeper sky, where stooping, you ma}' see 
The little minnows twirling restlessly." 

In the neighborhood of Aberdeen, the picturesque 
bridge over the Don, with its adjacent rocks, trees, and 
deep, dark stream, is known as the " brig of Balgow- 
nie." Thomas the Rhymer uttered many prophecies 
about " Balgownie's brig black wa' " ; and it figures 
among the scenes of Byron's boyhood. Let any one 
recall his sojourn in a foreign city, and conjure to his 
mind's eye the scenes, and prominent to his fancy, dis- 
tinct to his memory, will be the bridge. He will think 
of Florence as intersected by the Arno, and with the 
very name of that river reappears the peerless grace of 
the Ponte Santa Trinita with its moss-grown escutch- 
eons and aerial curves. He will recall the Pont du Gard 
with the vicinage of Nismes ; the Pont Neuf, at Paris, 
with its soldiers and priests, its boot-blacks and grisettes, 



BRIDGES. 357 

the gay streets on one side, and the studious quarter on 
the other, typifies and concentrates for him the associa- 
tions of the French capital ; and what a complete sym- 
bol of Venice — its canals, its marbles, its mysterious 
polity, its romance of glory and woe, — is a good pho- 
tograph of the Bridge of Sighs ! Her history is, in- 
deed, singularly identified with bridges. One, as her 
exchange, is permanently associated with the palmiest 
days of mediasval commerce ; another with the darker 
records of her criminal law; while on one of her 
bridges, Sarpi, the " terrible friar " Paolo was waylaid 
and nearly killed by Papal assassins, whence dates the 
most efficient protest against ecclesiastical tyranny. 

The history of Rome is written on her bridges. The 
Ponte Rotto is Art's favorite trophy of her decay ; two 
thirds of it has disappeared ; and the last Pope has in- 
effectively repaired it, by a platform sustained by iron 
wire : yet who that has stood thereon in the sunset, and 
looked from the dome of St. Peter's to the islands pro- 
jected at that hour so distinctly from the river's surface, 
glanced along the flushed dwellings upon its bank, with 
their intervals of green terraces, or gazed, in the other 
direction, upon the Cloaca of Tarquin, Vesta's dome, 
and the Aventine Hill, with its palaces, convents, vine- 
yards, and gardens, has not felt that the Ponte Rotto 
was the most suggestive observatory in the Eternal 
City ? The Ponte Molle brings back Constantine and 
his vision of the Cross ; and the statues on Sant' An- 
gelo mutely attest the vicissitudes of ecclesiastical eras. 

England boasts no monument of her modern victories 
so impressive as the bridge named for the most memo- 
rable of them. The best view of Prague and its peo- 
ple is from the long series of stone arches which span 



358 BRIDGES. 

the Moldau. The solitude and serenity of genius are 
rarely better realized than by musing of Klopstock and 
Gessner, Lavater and Zimmermann, on the Bridge of 
Kapperschwyl on the Lake of Zurich, where they dwelt 
and wrote or died. From the Bridge of St. Martin we 
have the first view of Mont Blanc. The Suspension 
Bridge at Niagara is an artificial wonder as great, in its 
degree, as the natural miracle of the mighty cataract 
which thunders forever at its side ; while no triumph 
of inventive economy could more aptly lead the imag- 
inative stranger into the picturesque beauties of Wales 
than the extraordinary tubular bridge across the Menai 
Strait. The aqueduct-bridge at Lisbon, the long cause- 
way over Cayuga Lake in our own country, and the 
bridge over the Loire at Orleans, are memorable in 
every traveller's retrospect. 

But the economical and the artistic interest of 
bridges is often surpassed by their historical sugges- 
tions, almost every vocation and sentiment of humanity 
being intimately associated therewith. The Rialto at 
Venice and the Ponte Vecchio at Florence, are identi- 
fied with the financial enterprise of the one city and the 
goldsmith's skill of the other: one was long the Ex- 
change of the " City of the Sea," and still revives the 
image of Shylock and the rendezvous of Antonio; while 
the other continues to represent mediaeval trade in the 
quaint little shops of jewellers and lapidaries. One of 
the characteristic religious orders of that era is identi- 
fied with the ancient bridge which crosses the Rhone 
at Avignon, erected by the " Brethren of the Bridge," a 
fraternity instituted in an age of anarchy expressly to 
protect travellers from the bandits, whose favorite place 
of attack was at the passage of rivers. The builder of 



BRIDGES. 359 

the old London Bridge, Peter Colechurch, is believed 
to have been attached to this same order ; he died in 
1176, and was buried in a crypt of the little chapel on 
the second pier, according to the habit of the fraternity. 
For many years a market was held on this bridge ; it 
was often the scene of war ; it stayed the progress of 
Canute's fleet ; at one time destroyed by fire, and at 
another carried away by ice ; half ruined in one era by 
the bastard Faulconbridge, and, at another, the watch- 
word of civil war, when the cry resounded, " Cade hath 
gotten London Bridge," and Wat Tyler's rebels con- 
vened there. Elizabeth and her peerless courtiers have 
floated, in luxurious barges and splendid attire, by its 
old piers, and the heads of traitors rotted in the sun 
upon its venerable battlements. Only sixty years ago a 
portion of the original structure remained;* it was once 
covered with houses ; Peter the Dutchman's famous 
water-wheels plashed at its side ; from the dark street 
and projecting gables noted tavern-signs vibrated in the 
wind. The exclusive thoroughfare from the city to 
Kent and Surrey, what ceremonial and scenes has it 
not witnessed, — royal entrances and greetings, rites 
under the low brown arches of the old chapel, revelry 
in the convenient hostels, traflic in the crowded mart, 
chimes from the quaint belfry, the tragic triumph of 
vindictive law in the gory heads upon spikes ! The 
veritable and minute history of London Bridge would 
illustrate the civic and social annals of England ; and 
romance could scarce invent a more effective back- 
ground for the varied scenes and personages such a 

* Sir Astley Cooper's nephew presented to Dr. Valentine Mott, the late 
eminent New York surgeon, an elegantly wrought case of amputating 
instruments, the handles of which are made of the wood and the blades 
of iron from old Loudon Bridge, whose oak timbers were laid iu 1176. 



360 BRIDGES. 

chronicle would exhibit than the dim local perspective, 
when, ere any bridge stood there, the ferryman's daugh- 
ter founded, with the tolls, a House of Sisters, subse- 
quently transformed into a college of priests. By a law 
of Nature, thus do the elements of civilization cluster 
around the place of transit ; thus do the courses of the 
water indicate the direction and nucleus of emigration, 
— from the vast lakes and mighty rivers of America, 
whereby an immense continent is made available to 
human intercourse, and therefore to material unity, to 
the point where the Thames was earliest crossed and 
spanned. More special historical and social facts may 
be found attached to every old bridge. In war, espe- 
cially, heroic achievement and desperate valor have often 
consecrated these narrow defiles and exclusive means 
of advance and retreat : - — 

"When the goodman mends his armor 

And trims his helmet's plume, 
When the goodwife's shuttle merrily 

Goes flashing through the loom, 
With weeping and with laughter 

Still is the story told 
How well Horatius kept the bridge 

In the good old days of old." 

The bridge of Darius spanned the Bosphorus, — of 
Xerxes, the Hellespont, — of Caesar, the Rhine, — and 
of Trajan, the Daimbe ; while the victorious march of 
Napoleon has left few traces so unexceptionably memo- 
rable as the massive causeways of the Simplon. Cicero 
arrested the bearer of letters to Catiline on the Pons 
Milonis, built in the time of Sylla on the ancient Via 
Flaminia ; and by virtue of the blazing cross which he 
saw in the sky from the Ponte Molle the Christian em- 
peror Constantine conquered Maxentius. The Pont 



BRIDGES. 361 

du Gard near Nismes, and the St. Esprit near Lyons, 
were originally of Roman construction. During the 
war of freedom, so admirably described by our country- 
man, whereby rose the Dutch Republic, the Huguenots, 
at the siege of Valenciennes, we are told, " made forays 
upon the monasteries for the purpose of procuring sup- 
plies, and the broken statues of the dismantled churches 
were used to build a bridge across an arm of the river, 
which was called, in derision, the Bridge of Idols." 

But a more memorable historical bridge is admirably 
described in another military episode of this favorite 
historian, — that which Alexander of Parma built across 
the Scheldt, whereby Antwerp was finally won for Philip 
of Spain. Its construction was a miracle of science and 
courage ; and it became the scene of one of the most 
terrible tragedies and the most fantastic festivals which 
signalize the history of that age, and illustrate the ex- 
traordinary and momentous struggle for religious liberty 
in the Netherlands. Its piers extended five hundred 
feet into the stream, — connected with the shore by 
boats, defended by palisades, fortified parapets, and 
spiked rafts ; cleft and partially destroyed by the vol- 
canic fire-ship of Gianebelli, a Mantuan chemist and 
engineer, whereby a thousand of the best troops of the 
Spanish army were instantly killed, and their brave 
chief stunned, — when the hour of victory came to the 
besiegers, it was the scene of a floral procession and 
Arcadian banquet, and " the whole extent of its surface 
from the Flemish to the Brabant shore " was alive with 
" war-bronzed figures crowned with flowers." " This 
magnificent undertaking has been favorably compared 
with the celebrated Rhine bridge of Julius Cajsar. 
When it is remembered, however, that the Roman work 



862 BRIDGES, 

was performed in summer, across a river only half as 
broad as the Scheldt, free from the disturbing action of 
the tides, and flowing through an unresisting country, 
while the whole character of the structure, intended 
only to serve for the single passage of an army, was far 
inferior to the massive solidity of Parma's bridge, it 
seems not unreasonable to assign the superiority to 
the general who had surmounted all the obstacles of 
a northern winter, vehement ebb and flow from the 
sea, and enterprising and desperate enemies at every 
point." * 

It was at the bridge of Pinos, where the Moors and 
Christians had so fiercely battled, that Columbus, after 
pleading his cause in vain at the court, hastening away 
with despondent steps, was overtaken by the queen's 
messenger ; recalled and provided with the substantial 
aid that led to his momentous discovery. It was in a 
pavilion in the middle of the bridge across the Seine at 
Montereau, that the Dauphin, afterwards Charles the 
Seventh, invited the Duke of Burgundy to meet him in 
colloquy; and there the latter met his death. The 
Bridge of Lodi is one of the great landmarks of Najoo- 
leon's career ; and the Bridge of Concord no insionifi- 
cant landmark of the American Revolutionary War. 
Over the Melos at Smyrna is a bridge which is a 
rendezvous for camels, and has been justly called " the 
central point of the commerce of Asia Minor." 

We have a memorable illustration of the historic 
interest of bridges, in the elaborate annals of the Pont 
Neuf t Although in importance it has long since been 
superseded by other elegant causeways, for centuries it 

* History of the Netherlands, Vol. I. p. 182. 
t Eistoire du Pont Neuf, par Edouard Foiirnier. 



BRIDGES. 363 

was the centre of Paris life, — of the trade and pastime, 
of the scandal and the violences, of the shows and 
emeiites, so that the record of what occurred there is 
an epitome of political and social history. It was the 
rendezvous of dog-clippers and ballad-singers, of hravi 
and gallants, of the quack and the courtesan, of student, 
soldier, artist, and gossip. "The heart of Paris beat 
there," says the historian of the Pont Neuf, " from the 
seventeenth century ; " the statue of Henry IV. alone 
made it the nucleus of political associations ; it was alike 
the scene of Cellini's adventure and Sterne's senti- 
ment. Catherine de Medicis laid its first stone. Henry 
IV. completed it; guillotines, cafes, and altars have 
signalized its extremities or parapets. La Fronde was 
there inaugurated ; there the discharge of cannon pro- 
claimed the flight of the king in '91 ; its pavement was 
bloody with the massacres of September ; the first Na- 
poleon there first tried his hand against the revolution ; 
it was the scene of an Englishman's famous bet and a 
parrot's famous lingo. Huguenot, royalist, priest, execu- 
tioner, gamin, assassin, thief, dandy, nun, hero, and ac- 
tress, — procession, tryst, ambush, faction, and farce, — 
murder, song, hon-mot, watchword, — the tragic, the holy 
and the hopeless in life, alternate in the story of the 
Pont Neuf The Countess du Barri, as a child, " the 
pretty little angel," was a vendor there ; and an old 
epigram identified her career with bridges, — her birth 
with the Pont au Choux, her childhood with the Pont 
Neuf, her triumph with the Pont Royale, and her end 
with the Pont aux Dames. 

Even the fragile bridges of our own country, during 
the Revolution, have an historical importance in the 
story of war. The " Great Bridge " across the Elizabeth 



364 BRIDGES. 

River, nine miles from Norfolk in Virginia ; the floating 
bridge at Ticonderoga ; that which spanned Stony Brook 
in New Jersey ; and many others, are identified with 
strife or stratagem. What an effective object in the 
distant landscape, to the hahitue of the Central Park 
in New York, is the lofty bridge whereby the Croton 
aqueduct crosses the Ilarlaem River, with its fifteen 
arches, its fourteen hundred feet of length, and its span 
of nearly a thousand ! How few of tTfe multitude to 
whom King's Bridge is a daily goal or transit, are cog- 
nizant of its historical associations ; yet the records of 
Manhattan Island declare that in 1692 " His Excellency 
the Governor, out of great favor and good to the city," 
proposed the building of this bridge, and soon ordered 
that "if Frederick Phillipse will undertake the same, 
he shall have the preference of their Majesties' grant, 
(5th of King William, and 3d of Queen Mary,) which 
was subsequently confirmed to the lord of the manor 
of Phillipsburgh " ; whereon was born and lived Wash- 
ington's first love — the beautiful Mary Phillipse. Plere 
was the barrier of the British when they occupied New 
York Island in the Revolution ; while as far north as 
the Croton River, extended the neutral ground, the 
scene of Cooper's first American romance, the heroine 
of which is this same fair but unresponsive enslaver of 
our peerless chief's young affections. Here in '75 
Congress ordered a post established to protect New 
York by land ; two years later occurred the san- 
guinary fight between the Continentals under Heath, 
and the Hessians under Knyphausen. The next year 
Cornwallis fixed his command at the same border 
causeway ; and in '81, when our army came near the 
spot to give the French officers a view of the out- 



BRIDGES. 365 

posts, a brisk skirmish ensued, and a number of our 
men were killed at long shot. King's Bridge was long 
the rendezvous of freebooters in those unsettled times, 
and the rallying-point of the Cow-boys. Beautifully 
situated at the confluence of the Hudson and Harlaem 
rivers, surrounded by high rolling hills, then thickly 
wooded and crowned with forts, the region was origi- 
nally selected as the site of New Amsterdam, on account 
of its secure position. When Manhattan Island was 
abandoned by the British in '76, Washington occupied 
King's Bridge as his head-quarters. Indeed, from Tren- 
ton to Lodi, military annals have few more fierce con- 
flicts than those wherein the bridge of the battle-ground 
is disputed ; to cross one is often a declaration of war, 
and Rubicons abound in history. 

There is probably no single problem, w^herein the 
laws of science and mechanical skill combine, which has 
so won the attention and challenged the powers of in- 
ventive minds as the construction of bridges. The 
various exigencies to be met, the possible triumphs to 
be achieved, the experiments as to form, material, secu- 
rity, and grace, have been prolific causes of inspiration 
and disappointment. In this branch of -economy, the 
mechanic and the mathematician fairly meet ; and it 
requires a rare union of ability in both vocations to 
arrive at original results in this sphere. To invent a 
bridge, through the application of a scientific principle 
by a novel method, is one of those projects which seem 
to fascinate philosophical minds ; in few have theory 
and practice been more completely tested; and the 
history of bridges, scientifically written, would exhibit 
as remarkable conflicts of opinion, trials of inventive 
skill, decision of character, genius, folly, and fame, as 



BRIDGES. 

any other chapter in the annals of progress. How to 
unite security with the least inconvenience, permanence 
with availability, strength with beauty, — how to adapt 
the structure to the location, climate, use, and risks, — 
are questions which often invoke all the science and 
skill of the architect, and which have increased in diffi- 
culty with the advance of other resources and requisi- 
tions of civilization. Whether a bridge is to cross a 
brook, a river, a strait, an inlet, an arm of the sea, a 
canal, or a valley, are so many diverse contingencies 
which modify the calculations and plans of the engineer. 
Here liability to sudden freshets, there to overwhelming 
tides, now to the enormous weight of railway-trains, 
and again to the corrosive influence of the elements, 
must be taken into consideration ; the navigation of 
waters, the exigencies of war, the needs of a population, 
the respective uses of viaduct, aqueduct, and roadway, 
have often to be included in the problem. These con- 
siderations influence not only the method of construc- 
tion, but the form adopted and the material, and have 
given birth to bridges of wood, brick, stone, iron, wire, 
and chain, — to bridges supported by piers, to floating, 
suspension, and tubular structures, many of which are 
among the remarkable trophies of modern science and 
the noblest fruits of the arts of peace. Railways have 
created an entirely new species of bridge, to enable a 
train to intersect a road, to cross canals in slanting 
directions, to turn amid jagged precipices, and to cross 
arms of the sea at a sufficient elevation not to interfere 
with the passage of ships, — objects not to be accom- 
plished by suspension-bridges because of their oscilla- 
tion, nor girder for lack of support, the desiderata being 
extensive span with rigid strength, so triumphantly 



BRIDGES. 367 

realized in the tubular bridge. The day when the great 
Holyrood train passing over the Strait of Menai by this 
grand expedient, established the superiority of this 
principle of construction, became a memorable occa- 
sion in the annals of mechanical science, and immor- 
talized the name of Stephenson. 

"We find great national significance in the history of 
bridges in different countries. Their costly and sub- 
stantial grandeur in Britain accords with the solid qual- 
ities of the race, and their elegance on the Continent 
with the pervasive influence of Art in Europe. It is a 
curious illustration of the inferior economical and high 
intellectual development of Greece, that the " Athenians 
waded, when their temples were the most perfect mod- 
els of architecture " ; and equally an evidence of the 
practical energy of the old Romans, that their stone 
bridges often remain to this hour intact. Oiu' own in- 
complete civilization is manifest in the marvellous num- 
ber of bridges that annually break down, from negligent 
or unscientific construction ; while the indomitable en- 
terprise of the people is no less apparent in some of the 
longest, loftiest, most wonderfully constructed and sus- 
tained bridges in the world. We have only to cross 
the Suspension Bridge at Niagara, or gaze up to its 
aerial tracery from the river, or look forth upon wooded 
ravines and down precipitous and umbrageous glens 
from the Erie Railway, to feel that in this, as in all 
other branches of mechanical enterprise, our nation is 
as boldly dexterous as culpably reckless. In no other 
country would so hazardous an experiment have been 
ventured as that of an engineer on one of the most fre- 
quented lines of railroad in the land, who finding the 
bridge he was approaching on fire, bade the passengers 



368 BRIDGES. 

keep their seats, and dashed boldly through the flames 
ere the main arch gave way ! " The vast majority of 
bridges in this country," says a recent writer, " whether 
for railroads or for ordinary horse-travel, have these ele- 
mental points: — 1. Fragility. 2. Unendurably hideous 
ugliness. 3. Great aptitude for catching fire. They 
are all built of wood, and must be constantly patched 
and mended, and will rot away in a very few years. 
They are enormous blots on the landscape, stretching 
as they do like long unpainted boxes across the stream ; 
like huge Saurian monsters with ever-open jaws into 
which you rush, or walk, or drive, and are gobbled up 
from all sight or sense of beauty. The dry timber of 
which they are built will catch fire from the mere spark 
of a locomotive, as in the case a few years ago of that 
hideous bridore which had so long insulted the Hudson 
River at Troy ; and which was not only burned itself, 
but spread the destroying flame to the best part of the 
town. These bridges deface all the valleys of our land. 
The Housatonic, the Mohawk, the Lehigh, the hundreds 
of small yet beautiful rivers which so deh'ghtfully diver- 
sify our country, one and all suffer by the vile wooden- 
bridge system which has nothing at all to plead in ex- 
tenuation of its tasteless, expensive existence. Every 
bridge in this country should be deprived of its heavy 
roof; and if the exigencies of engineering required 
side-walls, they should be plentifully perforated with 
open spaces. The more recent railroad bridges are 
fortunately open bridges, or ' viaducts,' as it is fashiona- 
ble to call them, and the traveller, as in the case of the 
Starucca viaduct on the Erie road, can both admire the 
engineering skill and enjoy the scenery. The Connecti- 
cut Valley is terribly disfigured by these bridges ; and 



BRIDGES. 369 

a traveller from New Haven to Memphremagog will be 
thoroughly impressed with this fact, which is the only 
drawback to the pleasure of the route." As an instance 
of ingenuity in this sphere, the bridge which crosses the 
Potomac Creek, near Washington, deserves notice. The 
hollow iron arches which support this bridge also serve 
as conduits to the aqueduct which supplies the city with 
water. 

Amid the mass of prosaic structures in London, what 
a grand exception to the architectural monotony are her 
bridges ! How effectually they have promoted her sub- 
urban growth ! " The English," wrote Rose, from Italy, 
" are Hottentots in architecture except that of bridges." 
Canova tliouorht the Waterloo Bridoe the finest in Eu- 
rope, and, by a strangely tragic coincidence, this noble 
and costly structure is the favorite scene of suicidal 
despair, wherewith the catastrophes of modern novels 
and the most pathetic of city lyrics are indissolubly 
associated. Westminster Bridge is as truly the Swiss 
Laboyle's monument of architectural genius, fortitude, 
and patience, as St. Paul's is that of Wren; there 
Crabbe, with his poems in his pocket, walked to and fro 
in a flutter of suspense the morning before his fortunate 
application to Burke ; and our own Remington's bridge- 
enthusiasm involves a pathetic story. At Cordova, the 
bridge over the Guadalquiver is a grand relic of Moor- 
ish supremacy. The oldest bridge in England is that 
of Croyland in Lincolnshire ; the largest crosses the 
Trent in Staffordshire. Tom Paine designed a cast- 
iron bridge, but th© speculation failed, and the materials 
were subsequently used in the beautiful bridge over the 
River Wear, in Durham County. There is a segment 
of a circle six hundred feet in diameter in Palmer's 
24 



370 BRIDGES. 

bridge which sj^ans our own Piscataqua. It is said that 
the first edifice of the kind which the Romans built of 
stone was the Ponte Potto, begun by the Censor Ful- 
vius and finished by Scipio Africanus and Lucius Mum- 
mius. Popes Julius III. and Gregory XIV. repaired 
it ; so that the fragment noW so valued as a picturesque 
ruin symbolizes both Imperial and Ecclesiastical rule. 
In striking contrast with the reminiscences of valor, 
hinted by ancient Roman bridges, are the ostentatious 
Papal inscriptions which everywhere in the States of 
the Church, in elaborate Latin, announce that this Pon- 
tiff built, or that Pontiff repaired, these structures. 

The mediaeval castle -moat and drawbridge have, 
indeed, been transferred from the actual world to that 
of fiction, history, and art, excejDt where preserved as 
memorials of antiquity ; but the civil importance which 
from the dawn of civilization attached to the bridge is 
as patent to-day as when a Roman emperor, a feudal 
lord, or a monastic procession went forth to celebrate or 
consecrate its advent or completion ; in evidence where- 
of, we have the appropriate function which made per- 
manently memorable the late visit of Victoria's son to 
her American realms, in his inauguration of the magnifi- 
cent bridge bearing her name, which is thrown across 
the St. Lawrence for a distance of only sixty yards less 
than two English miles, — the greatest tubular bridge 
in the world. When Prince Albert, amid the cheers of 
a multitude and the grand cadence of the national an- 
them, finished the Victoria Bridge by giving three blows 
with a mallet to the last rivet in the central tube, he 
celebrated one of the oldest, though vastly advanced, 
triumphs of the arts of peace, which ally the rights of 
the people and the good of human society to the repre- 
sentatives of law and polity. 



BRIDGES. 371 

One may recoil with a painful sense of material in 
congruity, as did Hawthorne, when contemplating the 
noisome suburban street where Burns lived ; but all the 
humane and poetical associations connected with the 
long struggle sustained by him, of " the highest in man's 
soul against the lowest in man's destiny," recur in sight 
of the Bridge of Doon, and the two " briggs of Ayr," 
whose " imaginary conversations " he caught and re- 
corded ; or that other bridge which spans a glen on the 
Auchinleck estate, where the rustic bard first saw the 
Lass of Ballochmyle. The tender admiration which 
embalms the name of Keats is also blent with the idea 
of a bridge. The poem which commences his earliest 
published volume was suggested, according to Milnes, 
as he " loitered by the gate that leads from the battery 
on Hampstead Heath to the field by Caen wood " ; and 
the young poet told his friend Clarke that the sweet 
passage, " Awhile upon some bending planks," came 
to him as he hung " over the rail of a foot-bridge that 
spanned a little brook in the last field upon entering 
Edmonton." One of Wordsworth's finest sonnets was 
composed on Westminster Bridge. To the meditative 
pedestrian, indeed, such places lure to quietude ; the 
genial Country Parson, whose " Recreations " we have 
recently shared, unconsciously illustrates this, as he 
speaks of the privilege men like him enjoy, when free 
" to saunter forth with a delightful sense of leisure, and 
know that nothing will go wrong, although he should 
sit down on the mossy parapet of the little one-arched 
bridge that spans the brawling mountain-stream." On 
that Indian-summer day when Irving was buried, no 
object of the familiar landscape, through which, without 
formality, and in quiet grief, so many of the renowned 



372 BRIDGES. 

and the humble followed his remains from the villasfe- 
church to the rural graveyard, wore so pensive a fitness 
to the eye as the simple bridge over Sleepy-Hollow 
Creek, near to which Ichabod Crane encountered the 
headless horseman, — not only as typical of his genius, 
which thus gave a local charm to the scene, but because 
the country-people, in their heartfelt wish to do him 
honor, had hung wreaths of laurel upon the rude planks. 
There are few places in Europe where the picturesque 
and historical associations of a bridge more vividly im- 
press the spectator than Sorrento ; divided from the 
main land by a gorge two hundred feet deep and fifty 
wide, the chasm is spanned by a bridge which rests on 
double arches, built by the Romans ; it is the popular 
rendezvous, and, beheld on coming from some adjacent 
orange-garden, resembles a picture, — the men with their 
crimson or brown caps, and the women with jetty hair 
and eyes, and enormous ear-rings, cluster there in the 
centre of the most exquisite scenery. There is a bridge 
across the Adige at Verona, which used to be opened 
but once a year, on account of the risk of injury — its 
span being prodigious ; it was long called the " Holiday 
Bridge." In Paris the change in the names of bridges 
is historically significant: in 1817 "the bridge of Aus- 
terlitz abdicated its name," and became the bridge of 
the Jardin des Plantes. The lofty bridge of Carignano, 
at Genoa, owes its existence to a quarrel between two 
noblemen ; and it is a favorite sacrificial spot to suicides 
who have repeatedly thrown themselves therefrom head- 
long into the Strada Servi. 

" The Baltimore and Ohio railroad company lose two 
of their admirable bridges: one at Fairmount, over the 
Monongahela River, and the famous one over the Cheat 



BRIDGES. 373 

Hiver," wrote a late reporter from the scene of war in , 
Virginia. " Tlie latter was one of the most beautiful 
structures in the United States, and, being placed amid 
scenery of unsurpassed grandeur, it had already become 
a classic spot in the guide-book of American art. It 
was vandalism fit for ingrates and traitors of the lowest 
type to destroy what was at once so beautiful and useful 
a monument of taste and science." 

Another fine landscape effect produced by a bridge 
is at Spoleto, in the Roman States ; the ten brick arches 
that so picturesquely span the romantic valley, have 
carried the water for centuries into the old city. The 
magnificent bridge by which Madrid is approached, is 
a grand feature in the adjacent landscape; and its 
striking photograph a noble souvenir of the Spanish 
capital. The most awful bridge imagination ever cre- 
ated, is that described by Milton, whereby Satan's " sea 
should find a shore " : — 

" Sin and Death amain 
Following his track, such was the will of Heaven, 
Pav'd after him a broad and beaten way 
O'er the dark abyss, whose boiling gulf 
Tamely endured a bridge of wond'rous length, 
From hell continued, reaching th' utmost orb 
Of this frail world ; by which the spirits pervei;se 
With easy intercourse pass to and fro 
To tempt and punish mortals." 

Fragments, as well as entire roadways and arches of 
natural bridges, are more numerous in rocky, mountain- 
ous, and volcanic regions than is generally supposed ; 
the action of the water in excavating cliffs, the segments 
of caverns, the accidental shapes of geological forma- 
tions, often result in structures so adapted for the use 
and like the shape of bridges as to appear of artificial 



374 BRIDGES. 

origin. In the States of Alabama and Kentucky, espe- 
cially, we have notable instances of these remarkable 
freaks of Nature ; there is one in Walker County, of the 
former State, which, as a local curiosity, is unsurpassed ; 
and one in the romantic County of Christian, in the latter 
State, makes a span of seventy feet with an altitude of 
thirty ; while the vicinity of the famous Alabaster Moun- 
tain of Arkansas boasts a very curious and interesting 
formation of this species. Two of these natural bridges 
are of such vast proportions and symmetrical structure 
that they rank among the wonders of the world, and 
have long been the goals of pilgrimage, the shrines of 
travel. Their structure would hint the requisites, and 
their forms the lines of beauty, desirable in architec- 
tural jDrototypes. Across Cedar Creek, in Eockbridge 
County, Virginia, a beautiful and gigantic arch, thrown 
by elemental forces and shaped by time, extends. It is 
a stratified arch, whence you gaze down two hundred 
feet upon the flowing water ; its sides are rock, nearly 
perpendicular. Popular conjecture reasonably deems 
it the fragmentary arch of an immense limestone cave ; 
its loftiness imparts an aspect of lightness, although at 
the centre it is nearly fifty feet thick, and so massive is 
the whole that over it passes a public road, so that by 
keeping in the middle one might cross unaware of the 
marvel. To realize its height it must be viewed from 
beneath; from the side of the creek it has a Gothic 
aspect; its immense walls, clad with forest-trees, its 
dizzy elevation, buttress-like masses, and aerial symme- 
try, make this sublime arch one of those objects which 
impress the imagination with grace and grandeur all the 
more impressive because the mysterious work of Na- 
ture, — eloquent of the ages, and instinct with the latent 



BRIDGES. 375 

forces of the universe. Equally remarkable, but in a 
diverse style, is the Giant's Causeway, whose innumera- 
ble black stone columns rise from two to four hundred 
feet above the water's edge in the County of Antrim, on 
the north coast of Ireland. These basaltic pillars are 
for the most part pentagonal, whose five sides are closely 
united, not in one conglomerate mass, but articulated so 
aptly that to be traced the ball and socket must be dis- 
jointed. 

The effect of statuary upon bridges is memorable; 
the Imperial statues which line that of Berlin form an 
impressive array ; and whoever has seen the figures on 
the Bridge of Sant' Angelo at Rome, when illuminated 
on a Carnival night, or the statues upon Santa Trinita 
at Florence, bathed in moonlight, and their outline dis- 
tinctly revealed against sky and water, cannot but 
realize how harmoniously sculpture may illustrate and 
heighten the architecture of the bridge. More quaint 
than appropriate is pictorial embellishment; a beautiful 
Madonna or local saint placed midway or at either end 
of a bridge, especially one of mediaeval form and fash- 
ion, seems appropriate ; but elaborate painting, such as 
One sees at Lucerne, strikes us as more curious than 
desirable. The bridge which divides the town and 
crosses the Reuss is covered, yet most of the pictures 
are weather-stained ; as no vehicles are allowed, foot- 
passengers can examine them at ease. They are in 
triangular frames, ten feet apart, but few have any 
technical merit. One series illustrates Swiss history ; 
and the Kapellbriicke has the pictorial life of the Saint 
of the town ; while the Mile Bridge exhibits a quaint 
and rough copy of the famous " Dance of Death." 

In Switzerland what fearful ravines and foaming cas- 



376 BRIDGES. 

cades do bridges cross ! sometimes so aerial, and over- 
hanging such precipices, as to justify to the imagination 
the name siiperstitiously bestowed on more than one, of 
the Devil's Bridge ; while from few is a more lovely 
effect of near water seen than the " arrowy Ehone," as 
we gaze down upon its " blue rushing " beneath the 
bridge at Geneva. Perhaps the varied pictorial effects 
of bridges, at least in a city, are nowhere more striking 
than at Venice, whose five hundred, with their mellow 
tint and association with palatial architecture and streets 
of water, especially when revealed by the soft and radi- 
ant hues of an Italian sunset, present outlines, shapes, 
colors, and contrasts so harmonious and beautiful as to 
warm and haunt the imagination while they charm the 
eye. It is remarkable, as an artistic fact, how gra- 
ciously these structures adapt themselves to such di- 
verse scenes, — equally, though variously, picturesque 
amid the sturdy foliage and wild gorges of the Alps, 
the bustle, fog, and mast-forest of the Thames, and the 
crystal atmosphere, Byzantine edifices, and silent canals 
of Venice. 

Whoever has truly felt the aerial perspective of Tur- 
ner has attained a delicate sense of the pictorial signi- 
ficance of the bridge ; for, as we look through his float- 
ing mists, we descry, amid Nature's most evanescent 
phenomena, the span, the arch, the connecting lines or 
masses whereby this familiar image seems to identify 
itself not less with Nature than with Art. Among the 
drawings which Arctic voyagers have brought home, 
many a bridge of ice, enormous and symmetrical, seems 
to tempt adventurous feet and to reflect a like form of 
fleecy cloud-land ; daguerreotyped by the frost in min- 
iature, the same structures may be traced on the win- 



BRIDGES. 377 

dow-pane ; printed on the fossil and the strata of rock, 
in the veins of bark and the lips of shells, or floating 
in sunbeams, an identical design appears ; and, on a 
summer morning, as the eye carefully roams over a 
lawn, how often do the most perfect little suspension- 
bridges hang from spear to spear of herbage, their filmy 
span embossed with glittering dew-drops ! * 

* " The invention of the Suspension Bridge, by Sir Samuel Brown, 
sprung fi-om the sight of a spider's web hanging across the path of the 
inventor, observed on a morning walk, when his mind was occupied 
with the idea of bridging the Tweed." 




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